Agricultural Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Agricultural Technicians worker at that point in the distribution, so $59,370 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 14,340 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 3,100 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 34.8% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in South Dakota, whose location quotient of 8.93 says this work is 8.93 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $69,010, which is 2.1 times the $32,860 at the 10th, a difference of $36,150 annually. Because the mean wage ($49,680) sits above the median ($46,790), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Arizona posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $63,340, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Agricultural Technicians stands number 620 by employment and number 603 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations, the group median wage is $84,150 across 48 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 44% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.0% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 18 of the 45 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $46,790, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA is the largest metro employer with 530 jobs, 3.7% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $42,030 a year, against $42,030 in Des Moines-West Des Moines, IA. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $46,790 works out to $3,899 a month before taxes, $1,800 per biweekly paycheck, and $900 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($38,480) to the 75th ($59,370) is worth $20,890 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $51,469 would sit between the median ($46,790) and the 75th percentile ($59,370), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $38,480, is $8,310 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Historians, Sociologists, Hydrologic Technicians, Animal Scientists, Astronomers, Geographers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.