Ever wondered what the most dangerous jobs in American might be? If I had to guess, I’d go with policeman, fireman, construction workers and bike messengers.

I can’t say that I’ve ever really put much thought into this questions but in an article from Yahoo Finance, Killer Jobs? No Really they decided to examine this topic a little bit and one of the jobs that made the list has a lot to do with travel.

Yahoo Finance mentions that the federal government keeps track of how many people work in each profession and how many die on the job. According to the article 2012 is the latest year where data was available. In 2012 “4,628 Americans died due to their occupation”.

The article shared the five most dangerous jobs along with their average pay. I guess Yahoo thought we might like to see if it pays to put your life at risk for your job…

Here are the Five Most Dangerous Jobs:

1. Underwater Welders- salary ranges from $58,600 to $94,600
2. Astronaut- salary ranges from $65,000 to $142,000
3. Logger- $33,630
4. Fisherman- $33,430
5. Pilots- $114,200 (median for airline pilots), $73,280 (median for commercial pilots)

Considering how we’re always told that flying in a plane is safer than driving in a car, I’d expect truckers to rank higher than pilots as a dangerous job. I also wondered how pilots would rank if they all weren’t lumped together. If airline pilots ranked on their own, I’d expect flight attendants to be considered a more dangerous job since there are more FAs on board than pilots per flight.

What would you expect the most dangerous jobs in America to be?

Find out more in the Yahoo Finance article here.