20 High-Paying Jobs That Make Workers Miserable

Some of the best-paid workers in the U.S. are actually quite miserable in their jobs.

While it's true that happiness at work usually increases with salary, that trend doesn't always hold. Lawyers, for example, make an average annual salary of $81,000 but report job satisfaction levels equal to employees making less than half of that.

To find out which high-paying jobs make people surprisingly unhappy, we teamed up with CareerBliss, an online jobs database. CareerBliss examined more than 250 jobs and determined that, in most cases, the salary of a job can accurately predict how happy its employees will be. But several notable jobs did not fall on CareerBliss's expected curve.

The jobs that made the list are the biggest outliers - positions that get paid a lot but have satisfaction rankings far below what's expected. For example, people making $90,000 to $100,000 usually have "bliss scores," the name for CareerBliss's job satisfaction ranking, of 3.8 on a five-point scale, where five represents the most satisfaction. The following outlier jobs have bliss scores below what would be expected for their pay.

For each surprisingly unhappy job, CareerBliss gave us the job's actual average salary and the "predicted" average salary - what they would expect people in the job to make, based on how happy they are. The bliss scores are created from employee reviews of eight factors: work-life balance; relationship with coworkers; work environment; job resources; compensation; growth opportunities; company culture; and daily tasks.

If you needed any more proof that money really isn't everything, it's in the list below.

1. Attorney
Actual average salary: $81,000
Predicted average salary: $35,235
Average bliss score: 3.28

2. Senior product manager
Actual average salary: $116,000
Predicted average salary: $74,409
Average bliss score: 3.34

3. Senior manager
Actual average salary: $112,000
Predicted average salary: $76,864
Average bliss score: 3.41

4. Director of IT
Actual average salary: $102,000
Predicted average salary: $67,413
Average bliss score: 3.53

5. Managing director
Actual average salary: $129,000
Predicted average salary: $94,210
Average bliss score: 4.08

6. Principal engineer
Actual average salary: $113,000
Predicted average salary: $80,837
Average bliss score: 3.84

7. Solutions architect
Actual average salary: $114,000
Predicted average salary: $82,901
Average bliss score: 3.70

8. Managing partner
Actual average salary: $108,000
Predicted average salary: $78,661
Average bliss score: 4.27

9. Engineering manager
Actual average salary: $102,000
Predicted average salary: $75,757
Average bliss score: 3.53

10. Senior project manager
Actual average salary: $103,000
Predicted average salary: $77,055
Average bliss score: 3.62

11. Senior programmer
Actual average salary: $85,000
Predicted average salary: $59,356
Average bliss score: 3.86

12. Assistant professor
Actual average salary: $61,000
Predicted average salary: $37,529
Average bliss score: 3.05

13. Director
Actual average salary: $102,000
Predicted average salary: $78,764
Average bliss score: 3.59

14. Creative director
Actual average salary: $79,000
Predicted average salary: $56,509
Average bliss score: 3.75

15. Senior software director
Actual average salary: $82,000
Predicted average salary: $59,784
Average bliss score: 3.83

16. Senior engineer
Actual average salary: $85,000
Predicted average salary: $63,694
Average bliss score: 3.39

17. Program manager
Actual average salary: $93,000
Predicted average salary: $71,349
Average bliss score: 3.52

18. Associate
Actual average salary: $65,000
Predicted average salary: $44,217
Average bliss score: 3.25

19. Lead developer
Actual average salary: $79,000
Predicted average salary: $58,563
Average bliss score: 3.73

20. Senior buyer
Actual average salary: $62,000
Predicted average salary: $41,166
Average bliss score: 3.04