Biological Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Biological Technicians ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $45,380. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 76,190, or 0.05% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 10,680 jobs; the top three states sum to 31.9% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Massachusetts posts a location quotient of 4.78, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $38,060 or less, and one in ten earns $81,990 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.2 to 1 and the annual gap is $43,930. The mean ($58,020) versus median ($52,000) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 50 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Massachusetts at $65,020; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Biological Technicians stands number 312 by employment and number 491 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 38% less than its group median, and it supplies 5.3% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 12 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $52,000, 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

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH is the largest metro employer with 7,680 jobs, 10.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 167 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Durham-Chapel Hill, NC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $45,900 a year, against $81,680 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,333 a month before tax, $2,000 biweekly, $1,000 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($45,380) to the 75th ($66,410) is worth $21,030 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $57,200 would sit between the median ($52,000) and the 75th percentile ($66,410), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $45,380, is $6,620 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

Sibling occupations in Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations: Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health, Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other, Biochemists and Biophysicists, Social Science Research Assistants, Occupational Health and Safety Technicians, Forest and Conservation Technicians. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.