10 Competitive Jobs That Everyone Wants But Hardly Anyone Gets

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One of the biggest job stresses is having to fight with competitors and coworkers for clients, commissions, and recognition.

Rather than focusing on your own work, highly competitive fields force you to be constantly aware of what everyone else is doing.

Competition is particularly acute in visible, hard-to-break-into industries like entertainment and sports, jobs that offer lucrative payouts to top performers, and coveted positions with only a limited number of spots.

Sports and talent agents, for example, constantly fight over a small number of high-profile clients. Poets and writers constantly fight to get published and have their work seen. And athletes compete on a daily basis as their job.

Based on data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), a U.S. Department of Labor database full of detailed information on occupations, below are the 10 most competitive jobs in America. The ranking measures the extent that the job "requires the worker to compete or to be aware of competitive pressures."

Each job is scored on a scale of zero to 100, with a score above 75 denoting a job that's extremely competitive:

1. Choreographers
Competitiveness score: 96

2. Poets, Lyricists and Creative Writers: 95
Competitiveness score: 95

3. Athletes and Sports Competitors
Competitiveness score: 94

4. Sales Agents, Securities and Commodities: 93
Competitiveness score: 93

5. Sound Engineering Technicians
Competitiveness score: 89

6. Makeup Artists, Theatrical and Performance
Competitiveness score: 88

7. Music Composers and Arrangers
Competitiveness score: 88

8. Music Composers and Arrangers
Competitiveness score: 88

9. Real Estate Sales Agents
Competitiveness score: 88

10. Agents and Business Managers of Artists, Performers, and Athletes
Competitiveness score: 85