14-07-2025
Australia's highest paying jobs
If you're banking on your child becoming a doctor or lawyer to rake in serious cash, you're not completely off the mark, but don't expect them to make Australia's Rich List anytime soon.
Fresh tax data from the Australian Taxation Office for 2022-23 reveals who's really earning the big bucks. While medicine still dominates, the journey to billionaire status seems to take a different route.
Top of the pay scale? Surgeons, by a long shot, with an average annual income of $472,475, making it the highest-paid job in the country.
Close behind are anaesthetists on $447,193, followed by financial dealers, who take home $355,233 annually.
Internal medicine specialists, who diagnose tricky conditions and manage long-term illnesses, make $342,457, while psychiatrists, in growing demand amid rising mental health issues, earn $286,146.
A broad group of other medical professionals, like radiologists and pathologists, sit around $259,802.
Outside of healthcare, mining engineers bring in $206,423, just edging out judges and top-tier lawyers, who earn $206,408.
Chief executives and managing directors average $194,987, while financial investment managers aren't far behind at $191,986.
Engineering managers take home $185,785, and importers/exporters earn $180,571.
Barristers make $167,390, and dentists aren't far behind on $165,723.
IT managers, who keep the digital backbone of companies running, earn $163,886. General practitioners, often the first port of call in Australia's healthcare system, make $163,232.
Management consultants earn $162,982, guiding businesses through change and strategy.
Geologists and geophysicists, who work in everything from mining to climate science, average $162,889.
Financial investment consultants follow closely at $162,842, and economists, who shape financial policy and crunch national data, round out the list at $161,633.
Further down the list are building project managers at $132,992, drilling plant operators at $132,272, electricians on $111,035, and plumbers at $86,722.
Waiters had the lowest average income of $28,885, with many working part-time or casual roles.
So who features on the rich list?
Not a single medical specialist appeared on the 2025 Rich List of Australia's 200 wealthiest people. In fact, the path to extreme wealth in Australia appears to be paved less by education and expertise - and more by inheritance and property.
According to the Australian Financial Review, property remains the most common source of wealth, with 44 of the top 200 fortunes linked to real estate.
But family ties are proving just as powerful.
Of the 23 mining moguls on the list, eight inherited their wealth from the original fortunes of Lang Hancock and Peter Wright.
In media and gaming, nearly half of the Rich List can trace their riches back to just two names: Frank Packer and Keith Murdoch.
So much for the self-made millionaire myth: these days, it seems being born into the right family is still the ultimate power move.
Others featured on the rich list had founded their own companies, such as Melanie Perkins of Canva who's now worth $5.8billion and Mike Cannon-Brookes of Atlassian worth $12.4billion.
David Burt, director of entrepreneurship at UNSW's start-up incubator told the Australian Financial Review that while the path to the top 200 may not lie in medicine, neither did it lie in being an employee.
He recommended parents encouraged entrepreneurialism in their offspring.
'Entrepreneurs come from all walks of life,' he said.
'Do a lemonade stand on the corner, get them to try and raise money for a charity, a job where they're forced to talk to people. Successful entrepreneurs have the ability to ask for that sale or ask for real feedback.'
But if the aim is simply to get rich, it won't happen, he said.
'If your only motivator is, "I want to make money as fast as possible" then don't start a company.
'That will not sustain you through the terror that comes with building a business because there's a lot of uncertainty, stress, ambiguity, financial risk, late nights and early mornings.'
