· 4 min read · worthmydegree.com
You took the Interest Profiler. Now price the list.
If you have just finished the O*NET Interest Profiler, the Department of Labor's free interest assessment, you are holding the best free career instrument the federal government makes: a profile of what kind of work suits you, and a list of careers that match it. Counselors have used it for two decades for a reason.
Here is what the list does not tell you. It does not say what the training for each career will cost you, at a real school, on a real loan. It does not say how widely pay varies inside a single career on your list. And it does not say which of two careers that fit you equally well leaves you further ahead ten years from now. Those are money questions, and they are the questions this site exists to answer. The careers on your Profiler list and the careers in this calculator come from the same federal occupation data, so you can look up your results here by name.
Every money figure below comes from the federal wage file this site runs on, the May 2025 release, rounded to the nearest thousand dollars.
What the preparation level is worth
The Profiler sorts careers by Job Zone, which is a preparation level: how much education and training a career typically needs before you can start. Here is what that level looks like in dollars, across all 825 careers in the federal file, using the typical pay for each career at its typical entry education:
| Typical entry education | Careers | Typical pay |
|---|---|---|
| No formal credential | 105 | ~$41,000 |
| Some college, no degree | 6 | ~$47,000 |
| High school diploma | 325 | ~$50,000 |
| Postsecondary nondegree award | 51 | ~$61,000 |
| Associate's degree | 48 | ~$67,000 |
| Bachelor's degree | 177 | ~$84,000 |
| Master's degree | 40 | ~$88,000 |
| Doctoral or professional degree | 73 | ~$103,000 |
Two things in that table are worth saying out loud. Each step up the education ladder buys a higher typical salary, and each step also costs years of tuition and years of forgone earnings, which is exactly the trade the calculator prices. And the step from a bachelor's to a master's is smaller than most people assume at the typical career, which is why pricing the specific career you have in mind beats reasoning from the credential.
Fit does not predict pay
Careers that suit you equally well can pay wildly differently. Among the 177 careers that typically need a bachelor's degree, the typical salary runs from about $42,000 to about $232,000, more than five times end to end. Your Profiler results group careers by interest, not by income, so two lines sitting next to each other on your list can be a factor of two or three apart.
The spread inside one career is nearly as large. Registered Nurses typically earn about $98,000, but the bottom tenth earns under $69,000 and the top tenth over $137,000, roughly twice the bottom. Graphic Designers run from about $40,000 at the tenth percentile to about $105,000 at the ninetieth. Where you work moves these numbers too, which is why the calculator shows each career's pay for the city you pick, not just the national figure.
Three questions to ask of every career on your list
What education does it actually need? The calculator reads the same federal answer the Profiler's Job Zones summarize, and it charges you exactly that many years of school, no more. A career that needs an associate's degree gets two years of cost, not four. Community college paths get their own treatment.
What will that education cost where you would get it? Type your school and the calculator fills in its real published cost of attendance. If you have no school in mind yet, the built-in search lists schools that teach your field inside a budget you set.
What does the borrowing do to your first decade? This is the question nothing on your results page answers. The calculator builds the loan, simulates the actual 2026 federal repayment plans, subtracts real taxes and cost of living, and tells you when a career path puts you ahead of someone who skipped the degree and went straight to work, and by how much.
Do this with your results open
Open the calculator in Career mode in one tab and your Profiler results in another. Take the top three careers on your list, look each one up by name, and give each the same school and city. Ten minutes later you will know something your interest profile could not tell you: which of the careers that fit you also pays for the education it requires, and how quickly.
Fit still comes first. A career you would hate is a bad deal at any salary, which is why the Profiler is the right place to start and this is the right place to go second. The order matters; do both.