Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians offer sit among all 62,130 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 62,130 jobs nationally, Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians make up 0.04% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 6,650 of those jobs, the top three states hold 25.6%, and the deepest concentration sits in Alaska (location quotient 2.89, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $54,290 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($97,840) is 2.2 times the 10th percentile ($43,550), a gap of $54,290 a year. The mean of $68,450 sitting above the median of $64,200 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 51 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is District of Columbia at $105,820; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians stands number 352 by employment and number 342 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 34% less than its group median, and it supplies 2.4% of the group's 2,567,220 jobs. In 20 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $64,200, 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

Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN is the largest metro employer with 1,840 jobs, 3.0% 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, Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $56,800 a year, against $100,920 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. 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

The median annual wage of $64,200 works out to $5,350 a month before taxes, $2,469 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,235 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($51,730) to the 75th ($79,550) is worth $27,820 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 $70,620 would sit between the median ($64,200) and the 75th percentile ($79,550), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $51,730, is $12,470 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: Surveying and Mapping Technicians, Surveyors, Mechanical Drafters, Environmental Engineers, Mechanical Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Health and Safety Engineers, Except Mining Safety Engineers and Inspectors. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.