Don’t Worry About Switching Careers – Presidents Do It All the Time

Long gone are the days of yore, when a squeaky clean man young right out of college, recently married to his high school sweetheart, went to work in the mail room of a company and retired 41 years later as a vice president.

No, in the modern world, precarity keeps even professional workers jumping from position to position. And the average working American will have three separate careers during their lifetime, as dramatic technological and social changes keep the job market in permanent flux.

With Presidents Day coming up next Monday, let’s take a look at some of the careers US presidents held before they went into politics.

Twenty-three US presidents were lawyers, including Abraham Lincoln, Franklin Roosevelt and Bill Clinton. Of course, the skills and knowledge of a lawyer are directly useful to a politician (or at least should be.. you hear me, Blago?).

Six presidents were teachers or college professors, including Woodrow Wilson (at Wesleyan, he coached the football team) and Lyndon Johnson (a Texas high school teacher).

Grover Cleveland was sheriff of Erie County, New York; Warren G. Harding was editor of the Marion, Ohio Daily Star; Thomas Jefferson was an architect, archaeologist, inventor, and farmer; and Herbert Hoover was a minig engineer and an author.

George W. Bush was an oil company chairman and manager of a baseball team, although he wasn’t particularly good at either. Barack Obama was a research associate and a community organizer.

So if you find yourself leaving behind one career for another, don’t worry. You’re in good company.

And have a happy Presidents Day!