Chemical Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Chemical Technicians offer sit among all 55,640 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 55,640, or 0.04% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 6,510 jobs; the top three states sum to 29.1% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Delaware posts a location quotient of 3.50, 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 $39,030 or less, and one in ten earns $90,990 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.3 to 1 and the annual gap is $51,960. The mean ($61,300) versus median ($57,790) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Chemical Technicians runs from the $83,480 median in Louisiana down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (6,510 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Chemical Technicians stands number 371 by employment and number 445 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 31% less than its group median, and it supplies 3.8% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 16 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $57,790, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 3,590 jobs, 6.5% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $36,980 a year, against $74,120 in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX. 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

As a household number, $57,790 a year is $4,816 a month gross, $2,223 every two weeks, $1,111 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,680) to the 75th ($72,940) is worth $26,260 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 $4,816 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 $63,569 would sit between the median ($57,790) and the 75th percentile ($72,940), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,680, is $11,110 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Biological Scientists, All Other, Urban and Regional Planners, Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health, Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other, Biochemists and Biophysicists, Social Science Research Assistants. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.