Biological Scientists, All Other Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Biological Scientists, All Other worker at that point in the distribution, so $121,350 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

May 2024 employment stood at 59,710, or 0.04% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 12,580 jobs; the top three states sum to 34.9% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Maryland posts a location quotient of 4.91, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $105,280 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($159,780) is 2.9 times the 10th percentile ($54,500), a gap of $105,280 a year. The mean of $100,440 sitting above the median of $93,330 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 12,580 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Connecticut would lead at $120,880. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Biological Scientists, All Other stands number 358 by employment and number 154 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 11% more than its group median, and it supplies 4.1% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 12 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $93,330, 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

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is the largest metro employer with 6,270 jobs, 10.5% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $80,540 a year, against $140,490 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $93,330 works out to $7,778 a month before taxes, $3,590 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,795 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($67,950) to the 75th ($121,350) is worth $53,400 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 $102,663 would sit between the median ($93,330) and the 75th percentile ($121,350), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $67,950, is $25,380 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Social Science Research Assistants, Occupational Health and Safety Technicians, Forest and Conservation Technicians, Conservation Scientists, Physical Scientists, All Other, Geoscientists, Except Hydrologists and Geographers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.