This Is the Number-One Dream Job in Every Country in the World

A new study shows that a whole lot of us want to be pilots.

While your actual dream might be that of spending the rest of your life chilling on the beach in the sun, sunglasses on and with a refreshing drink in hand, professionally speaking there's surely one career path that piques your interest more than others.

The online remittance service Remitly recently looked at exactly that, and tried to figure out what countries around the world aspire to the most when it comes to their job prospects. To come up with the study results, it looked at global search data for every country, and specifically took into consideration searches like "how to become" followed by a specific profession to ensure the "dreamy" trait of it was accounted for.

The absolute winner at the top of the list is becoming a pilot. With almost one million annual “how to be a pilot” searches around the world (and its translations in other languages), this career is the most searched for in the world, and for 25 countries—including the US, England, and Australia—it is the most coveted position of all. It isn't hard to understand why, either: Excellent pay, constant travel to the discovery of new places, and good benefits surely make it a dreamy job for many.

Second on the list is the job of yours truly. Becoming a writer and its iterations, including novelist, scriptwriter, journalist, or copywriter, is the most popular search for 75 countries around the world (801,200 worldwide global search volume), and residents of New Zealand, South Africa, and Sweden are among those most angling for the life of a scribe.

The bronze medal, perhaps surprisingly, goes to wannabe professional dancers. While the job is definitely hard and it involves a great amount of perfection and sacrifice, data shows that many people dream of becoming a dancer in their life. Specifically, this career flaunts 278,720 annual worldwide global searches.

To better show the study's findings, Remitly put together a color-coded world map providing a general view of the most dreamed-of career paths in every country. Residents of China, for example, want to be dietitians, while Egyptians dream of being football coaches, and Puerto Ricans hope to be attorneys. You can find out more right here.

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Serena Tara is a Staff Writer on the News team at Thrillist. Follow her on Twitter and Instagram.