Career profile · SOC 11-1021

General and Operations Managers

Plan, direct, or coordinate the operations of public or private sector organizations, overseeing multiple departments or locations.

Median salary
$102,950
per year
Growth outlook
Average
BLS 10-yr
Education
Bachelor's degree
AI exposure
5.6/10
automation risk

Salary distribution (US)

Real salary data from U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The p10–p90 spread tells you more than the median alone.

Bottom 10%
$46,440
25th %ile
$65,080
Median
$102,950
75th %ile
$157,120
Top 10%
$210,830

Top skills

Active Listening Coordination Speaking Critical Thinking Monitoring Judgment and Decision Making Management of Personnel Resources Reading Comprehension Social Perceptiveness Time Management

Knowledge you'll build

  • Administration and Management
  • Customer and Personal Service
  • English Language
  • Personnel and Human Resources
  • Economics and Accounting
  • Mathematics
  • Production and Processing
  • Law and Government

A day in the life

You arrive early to scan financial reports, overnight sales figures, and operational dashboards before your first meeting, mentally prioritizing the fires that need attention today. Your calendar is packed: morning leadership huddles, one-on-ones with department heads, vendor calls, and strategy sessions where you balance budgets, staffing, and long-term goals against the realities of day-to-day operations. You walk the floor regularly, checking in with frontline teams, solving bottlenecks, and making judgment calls that ripple across the entire organization. The role is rewarding when you see your decisions move the needle on revenue or employee morale, but exhausting because the buck always stops with you and the problems are rarely simple.

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