Cartographers and Photogrammetrists 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 Cartographers and Photogrammetrists ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $62,860. 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

With 12,790 jobs nationally, Cartographers and Photogrammetrists make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 1,550 of those jobs, the top three states hold 31.3%, and the deepest concentration sits in Colorado (location quotient 5.77, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $50,500 or less, and one in ten earns $121,440 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.4 to 1 and the annual gap is $70,940. The mean ($82,860) versus median ($78,380) 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, 44 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is District of Columbia at $117,960; the jobs leader is Texas:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Cartographers and Photogrammetrists stands number 644 by employment and number 222 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Architecture and Engineering Occupations, the group median wage is $96,690 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 19% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.5% of the group's 2,567,220 jobs. In 17 of the 44 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $78,380, 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

Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO is the largest metro employer with 930 jobs, 7.3% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 66 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, Denver-Aurora-Centennial, CO posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $86,600 a year, against $99,830 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. 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: $6,532 a month before tax, $3,015 biweekly, $1,507 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($62,860) to the 75th ($99,650) is worth $36,790 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 $86,218 would sit between the median ($78,380) and the 75th percentile ($99,650), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $62,860, is $15,520 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Architecture and Engineering Occupations

Sibling occupations in Architecture and Engineering Occupations: Materials Engineers, Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers, Chemical Engineers, Electrical and Electronics Drafters, Landscape Architects, Petroleum Engineers. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.