Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($53,310) to the 90th ($199,260). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 11,480 Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in New York, where the location quotient is 2.90, meaning the occupation holds 2.90 times its national share of local jobs. New York employs the most people outright, 2,060 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 40.0% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $53,310 or less, and one in ten earns $199,260 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 3.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $145,950. The mean ($112,950) versus median ($101,390) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts New York first at 2,060 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, California would lead at $129,000. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Atmospheric, Earth, Marine, and Space Sciences Teachers, Postsecondary stands number 669 by employment and number 115 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Educational Instruction and Library Occupations, the group median wage is $76,210 across 64 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 33% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 20 of the 42 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $101,390, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,270 jobs, 11.1% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $141,160 a year, against $172,270 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $101,390 a year is $8,449 a month gross, $3,900 every two weeks, $1,950 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($66,620) to the 75th ($135,500) is worth $68,880 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $8,449 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $111,529 would sit between the median ($101,390) and the 75th percentile ($135,500), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $66,620, is $34,770 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Educational Instruction and Library Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Teachers and Instructors, All Other, Educational Instruction and Library Workers, All Other, Kindergarten Teachers, Except Special Education, Career/Technical Education Teachers, Postsecondary, Career/Technical Education Teachers, Secondary School, Art, Drama, and Music Teachers, Postsecondary. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.