Some jobs tend towards higher divorce rates and some lower. While not your full identity, a job suggests salary, education, and age, among other characteristics that are related to relationship history.
The following charts show jobs with the highest to the lowest divorce rates, based on data from the American Community Survey.
Divorce rate, by occupation
Search for or select an occupation below.
The survey does not directly ask respondents if they have ever divorced or separated. Instead, we know the marital status at the time of the survey and the number of times someone has married. The above reflects the percentage of people who work a job and were either divorced, separated, or married more than once. For example, a person in his second marriage would say he was currently married, but we assume he was divorced previously.
Bus drivers are among those most commonly divorced or separated at 48%. Bartenders, vocational nurses, and massage therapists show similar.
Actuaries, professional estimators of risk, are way at the bottom at only 14%. Physical scientists are almost as equally measured.
Here is the breakdown by occupation category.
Divorce rate by job category
Among workers who married at least once
Healthcare support and transportation have higher divorce rates, which matches with the overall chart. The computer and math category, along with architecture and engineering, tends towards lower rates.
Some categories, such as protective service or healthcare practitioners, cover a wider range instead of clustering in one spot. This usually means the category has more variation in jobs.
My takeaway is the actuaries. It still amuses me that they’re the outliers on the low end. Right on the nose.
Notes
The data is based on the five-year American Community Survey for 2024. I downloaded microdata via IPUMS. I analyzed and processed the data in R and made the charts with D3.js.