February 5, 2024
Which profession do you think Americans hold in the highest esteem when it comes to ethical standards?
If you said “lawyer” (which, come on, you didn’t), you were way off.
At the top of the list? Nurses, of whom 78% of those polled indicated they thought had high or very high ethical standards, making them the highest-rated profession in the United States. 65% had that to say of veterinarians (who has ever heard of an unethical veterinarian??), 60% about engineers and 56% about doctors.
To no one’s shock, lawyers landed fairly low on the scale, with just 16% of Americans opining that they had high or very high ethical standards, just a smidge below journalists, who stood at 19%.
But we beat business executives, insurance salespeople and stockbrokers, all of whom came in at 12%.
At the bottom of the barrel? U.S. senators and members of Congress, of whom just 6% thought of as highly or very highly ethical.