Occupations With Strongest Links to Homeownership

Your job might be the biggest clue to whether you'll ever own a home—and who's still getting priced out. Axios reports that a National Association of Realtors analysis comparing 2014 and 2024 census data finds management and business professionals still lead the pack, with teachers and social service workers close behind. But the real movement is happening elsewhere: Higher-paid STEM workers are losing ground, likely because they're clustered in expensive housing markets, even as service and sales workers—long at the bottom—are slowly gaining. The overall US homeownership rate sits around 65%, but that masks shifts beneath the surface: In roughly 61% of metro areas analyzed, the occupation most likely to own a home in 2024 wasn't the same as a decade earlier. Homeownership rates in different occupations:

• Management and business, 72%
• Education and social services, 67%
• STEM and technical, 67%
• Sales and real estate, 63%
• Health care, 62%
• Skilled trades and construction, 62%
• Transportation and public safety, 58%
• Service, 46%

See how those rates compare to 2014 here.