Then you should cross massage therapist, bartender, and dancer off your list of potential mates – according to one study anyway.  Researchers at Radford University recently released a study which claims to identify the 15 occupations that make one most likely to get divorced.  According to the study massage therapist, bartender, and dancer come out as the top three professions most likely to lead to divorce.

Other jobs with high divorce rates include telemarketers, food & tobacco factory workers and folks who work in casinos.  The findings appear to be based primarily on statistical rates of divorce in each of these occupations, and there’s not much explanation of why these occupations supposedly make one more likely to divorce.   What could a ballerina and tobacco factory worker possibly have in common that makes them both more likely to divorce than someone in another profession?

Perhaps the same personalities who are drawn to these fields are also more likely to divorce.  Or maybe the stressful nature or demanding hours of some of these professions make it difficult to maintain a relationship.  Many of these jobs are low paying – could that be the common thread that links these very different professions to divorce?

Hard to say.  And of course, it seems like every week there’s a new study that claims to have found yet another factor that makes divorce more likely.  To cite just a few examples, residing in a so-called “red state“, having a daughter, or being a woman with an advanced degree have all been found in one study or another to have a correlation with divorce.  What this breadth of research really shows is that there is a myriad of reasons and factors that lead people to split up – and one’s job alone probably isn’t the only one.