Nurses remain the most ethical and honest professionals according to U.S. adults in Gallup’s annual survey on perceptions of various career fields.
Nearly one third (29%) of all respondents rated nurses as “very high” when asked to “rate the honesty and ethical standards” of 18 professions.
This is the 20th year in a row that nurses have topped the list in Gallup’s poll, and it is a two-point increase in “very high” responses from 2021. However, this represents a significant decline from 2020, when 41% said “very high.” When looking at a combination of very high and high responses, 79% of U.S. adults rated nurses as one of these options – down two points from 2021 and 10 points from 2020.
Medical doctors were the second most highly rated profession at 17% very high and 45% high, followed by pharmacists (14% very high; 44% high); high school teachers (14% and 39%, respectively) and police officers (13% and 37%, respectively).
No other professions had more than 10% of all adults rate their honest and ethics as very high, and no other professions had a combined very high / high rating of more than 50%.
Clergy had an 8% very high ethics and honest rating, and a combined 34% very high / high rating. This tied with judges at 8% in the very high responses, but they were behind both accountants (41%) and judges (39%) in the very high / high combined ratings.
Clergy tied for sixth (out of 18 professions) in very high responses and were eighth in very high / high combined responses.
In 2021, 36% of all respondents rated clergy ethics and honesty as very high / high, while 39% did so in 2020 and 40% in 2019.
“Members of the clergy were first measured by Gallup in 1977 and were frequently among the top-rated professions until 2002, amid a sexual abuse scandal in the Roman Catholic Church,” Pew noted in a press release announcing the report. “While the clergy’s high/very high ethics ratings recovered to some degree in subsequent years, they fell to 50% in 2009 and have been declining since 2012 as Americans’ religious identification and church attendance have also fallen. The latest reading of 34% for members of the clergy is the lowest by two points.”
The full report is available here. The margin of error is plus or minus four percentage points.
Managing editor for news and opinion at Good Faith Media.
