Chemists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Chemists offer sit among all 83,250 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

With 83,250 jobs nationally, Chemists make up 0.05% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Pennsylvania alone holds 9,070 of those jobs, the top three states hold 28.5%, and the deepest concentration sits in Delaware (location quotient 4.60, 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 $53,210 or less, and one in ten earns $154,430 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.9 to 1 and the annual gap is $101,220. The mean ($95,940) versus median ($84,150) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

District of Columbia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $153,320, and Pennsylvania the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Chemists stands number 295 by employment and number 185 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 0% more than its group median, and it supplies 5.8% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 19 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $84,150, 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 7,300 jobs, 8.8% 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, Madison, WI posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $76,280 a year, against $143,440 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. 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, $84,150 a year is $7,012 a month gross, $3,237 every two weeks, $1,618 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($63,930) to the 75th ($120,210) is worth $56,280 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 $7,012 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 $92,565 would sit between the median ($84,150) and the 75th percentile ($120,210), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $63,930, is $20,220 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Food Science Technicians, Epidemiologists, Geological Technicians, Except Hydrologic Technicians, Foresters, Atmospheric and Space Scientists, Materials Scientists. The full directory is on the Careers hub.