15 Jobs with High School Diploma and No Experience

If you just finished high school and are eager to get a job as soon as possible, our list of 15 jobs with high school diploma and no experience, should have some information that you need.

High school graduates, get paid less than those with the college degree, that is well-known, but what you might not know is that they are also paid less than they were paid 17 years ago; the average wages are 4.3 percent lower than in 2000. At the same time, college graduates are paid 1.4 percent higher than in 2000. We can conclude that not only college graduates have average wages per hour that are almost double the average wages per hour for high school graduates – $19.18 versus $10.89, but the difference has been increasing. Unemployment rate for college graduates was 5.6 percent in 2016, and 5.5 percent in 2007, and the unemployment rate for high school graduates was 17.9 percent in 2016, and 15.9 percent in 2007. Underemployment rate for college graduates was 9.6 percent in 2007 and was 12.6 percent in 2016. Underemployment rate for high school graduates was 26.8 percent in 2007, and 33.7 percent in 2016. From all these statistics, we can see that college graduates, were affected less by the great recession.

There are also some unforeseen consequences of possessing a college degree (or maybe being able to get one) -– for a woman having at least a bachelor’s degree, the chance of her first marriage lasting 20 years is almost double (78 percent) compared to a woman with a high school degree –- which has only 41 percent chance. The chance of marriage lasting 20 years is also higher for men with at least bachelor’s degree, though the difference, when compared to men with high school diploma, is not as big as was the case for women.

What may be of some consolation to readers that do not have a college degree, is that according to Economic Policy Institute “The rising cost of college combined with the failure of wages to grow for young college graduates signals that a college education is becoming a more uncertain investment.” Federal Reserve Bank of New York, has done research that showed that only 37 percent of all student debt holders are able to repay their loans as scheduled.

Because this article about jobs with high school diploma and no experience covers jobs that require high school diploma, and that do not require prior experience, we realized that jobs that need very long training or possibly need huge financial investment, should also not be on the list. For example becoming a commercial pilot takes a lot of money and time. Another example is becoming an electrician — the apprenticeship takes four to five years. While we are focusing on jobs that require the least amount of work to get started, for this article, you should consider investing time in additional education even if it takes five years of apprenticeship because those jobs usually have better wages. However, if you don’t have a college degree, but you still want to build your career, you will probably find our list of 10 career options for non college graduates useful as well.

For our list, we are using data from Bureau of Labor Statistics. We filtered the data for jobs that require a finished high school and no prior experience. We also filtered for jobs that require either no training or short-term training and excluded the jobs that have less than 10,000 projected job openings for the period from 2014 to 2024. And as the final step, we sorted our list by the median annual wage. For our list of jobs with high school diploma and no experience to make a little more sense, we excluded very broad job categories; for example the data set contains job titles such as “transportation worker, all other” — where all other means that the data set includes many separately listed transportation worker jobs, such as bus driver, or a commercial pilot, whereas all others are clumped together in what is now a very vague category.

15. Social and Human Service Assistants

Median annual wage (2016): $31,810

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 0.1

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 120,000

Social and human service assistants usually work under the supervision of social workers or health care workers, and provide services to clients, in order to help them achieve a better quality of life.

14. Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan

Median annual wage (2016): $32,150

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 0.2

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 55,500

This job consists of communicating with people all day long, by telephone, mail or in person, and getting them to complete some forms, applications, or questionnaires.

13. Customer Service Representatives

Median annual wage (2016): $32,300

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 0.4

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 888,700

If you have good communication skills, and you have the nerves to listen to customer complaints, then also processing orders, and providing relevant information about products and services of the company you work for, should be a piece of cake. This is the job that has the most projected job openings of all the jobs on our list.

12. Cutting and Slicing Machine Setters, Operators, and Tenders

Median annual wage (2016): $32,870

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 1.5

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 12,700

This job requires a knowledge of the machine you work with, and possibly a passion for cutting/slicing things, such as stone, glass, rubber, cork, tobacco, food, paper or insulating material. This category doesn’t include woodworking and textile machine setters operators and tenders, and also doesn’t include cutting, punching and press machine setters, operators, and tenders.

11. Order Clerks

Median annual wage (2016): $33,370

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 2.0

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 53,100

This job involves receiving and processing orders for merchandise, goods, and services, and ensuring that all data is accurate, including for example credit card information.

10. Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Except Legal, Medical, and Executive

Median annual wage (2016): $34,820

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 0.8

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 323,100

This job involves various tasks such as organizing and maintaining files, scheduling appointments, receiving phone calls, and providing information to callers.

9. Tree Trimmers and Pruners

Median annual wage (2016): $35,030

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 25.9

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 12,600

Well if you loved to climb trees when you were a kid, and you still do, then this is a job for you. This job doesn’t only involve climbing trees with different techniques and equipment but also using handsaws, hand pruners, clippers and power pruners.

8. Reservation and Transportation Ticket Agents and Travel Clerks

Median annual wage (2016): $35,230

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 1.9

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 17,700

This job involves making and confirming reservations for transportation lodging, or selling transportation tickets, providing tourists with transportation information, checking baggage, and delivering tickets. This job category excludes travel agents, hotel, motel, resort desk clerks, and cashiers.

7. Community Health Workers

Median annual wage (2016): $37,330

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 0.6

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 18,800

We are continuing our list of jobs with high school diploma and no experience with this job that is about helping individuals and communities, switch to healthier lifestyles and improve individual and community health. Sometimes this involves providing services such as first aid and blood pressure screening and collecting data to help identify community health needs.

6. Fitness Trainers and Aerobics Instructors

Median annual wage (2016): $38,160

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 10.6

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 74,900

This job title is clear enough, and the major requirements are obviously that you are in good shape, and good-looking. This job category doesn’t include coaches and scouts, and athletic trainers and it is still one of the best jobs with high school diploma and no experience.

5. Loan Interviewers and Clerks

Median annual wage (2016): $38,630

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 0.5

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 51,300

This job involves interviewing applicants, gathering and verifying information and references, preparing loan request papers, and forwarding all documents to appraisal department.

4. Cargo and Freight Agents

Median annual wage (2016): $41,920

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 0.2

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 31,300

This job, the next on our list of jobs with high school diploma and no experience consists of coordinating incoming and outgoing cargo and freight shipments, in the airline, train, and trucking terminals, and shipping docks, taking orders from customers and determining shipping charges and tariffs.

3. Title Examiners, Abstractors, and Searchers

Median annual wage (2016): $45,80

Percentage of self-employed (2014): 23

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 15,600

These jobs consist of digging through documents and preparing copies or summaries of those that have been requested.

2. Postal Service Mail Sorters, Processors, and processing machine Operators

Median annual wage (2016): $56,220

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 13,600

This job that ranks 2nd on our list of jobs with high school diploma and no experience is for managing incoming and outgoing mail, operating and tending mail processing, sorting and canceling machinery, keeping records of shipments, and other duties in the postal service.

1. Postal Service Mail Carriers

Median annual wage (2016): $58,110

Job openings due growth and replacements (2014-2024): 57,400

On top of our list of 15 jobs with high school diploma and no experience is postal service mail carrier. Who would have thought that the best job with a high school diploma would be to be a postal service mail carrier, I for one would have never guessed it.