#1 Job for 2014... Mathematician

Check this out: The best (and worst) jobs for 2014.
Mathematicians is the #1 job! I find this hard to believe. That mid-level income is fairly impressive: $101,360. And high income and outlook, and low stress!

A tenured professor make much less than they should be: just a humble $68,970. Any one of these are probably more sophisticated than your typical more-money-making co-worker.

But I challenge you to see if you can find such mathematician job. (go to dice.com for example, you search for 'math' and it will give you just a few programming/financial jobs). Nobody pays you for solving simple stuff that you can learn in school (unless you go to teaching I suppose, but look at how much does the prestigious tenured professor make)

I think those have interest in math just MUST also have interest in something else: programming, financial stuff, engineering, etc.

The genuine purity of pure math belongs to those who are real real good (belonging to the professor/research track). You must be top of the top (and I am hell no not).

Think you can be a mathematician? Don't let people discourage you. Take some advanced math classes. That "pre-calculus" is not advanced, ok? Even elementary calculus is not. Those are child's play. I am talking abstract algebra, number theory, differential equations etc. And those are just the beginning. Still survive? Good for you!
Those people who study the real advanced stuff may find themselves in lonely land... not too many people outside your field will have any clue what they work with. Try explaining the greatness of the Green's Theorem to a high school student to see what I mean (I bet you don't remember/know what that is unless you just came out of that calculus 3 final).

Much of the rest of the world can't tell me the significance of the quadratic formula. Nor able to tell you where the 1/3 comes from in the volume of the cone: 1/3 π r² h. (Hint: spin a little line segment (slope = r/h) about the x-axis with that disk method is one way).

"Mathematicians" being the #1 job? But where are the jobs? Can I find such job to apply? If there is one I probably don't have enough skills. But hey I know far more than most people I encounter.