The salary information company PayScale.com released a study ranking professions by ego and found that Americans are pretty darn confident.

Just under half of U.S. workers believe they are the best at their jobs in their respective workplaces, and the most confident workers tend to be in food and drink.

Of the top 10 most confident jobs, three are in the food and drink industry — with the award for most confident worker going to private household chef. Second place goes to Chief Executives, followed by art directors and airfield operations specialists. Chefs and head cooks fall into seventh, followed by bartenders in eighth.

Some of these rankings are understandably skewed. Private household chefs, for example, often work alone, thereby making them the de facto best at their jobs.

To compile the data, PayScale surveyed close to 383,028 workers in a variety of industries throughout two years. Survey participants were asked to provide information about their profession, income and company and rank how strongly they related to the following statement, “I am the top performer at my company for jobs similar to mine.”

Responses were then compared with the pool of responders, and analyzed based on information about gender, generation, pay range, company size and education.

They noted several interesting trends.

Although the survey shows a correlation between higher pay and higher confidence, the most confident jobs don’t necessarily have the highest pay. The median income of a private chef, for example, is about $34,000.

And doctors, despite making among the highest median incomes, seem to be a pretty modest (or self-doubting) bunch. Doctors had some of the lowest ego scores — only 39 percent reported being the best performers in their workplaces. PayScale told the Chicago Tribune that internists tied for second to last with cable repairmen and firefighters. Graduate student instructors ranked dead last.

Here are the top 3 scorers by profession, percentage who said they were best at their jobs and median income:

1. Private household chefs – 76 percent, $34,400
2. Chief Executives – 72 percent, $76,600
3. Art Directors – 65 percent, $48,600

Multimedia business & healthcare reporter Chloe Aiello can be reached via email at caiello@denverite.com or twitter.com/chlobo_ilo.

Subscribe to Denverite’s newsletter here.