Computer and Information Research Scientists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Computer and Information Research Scientists worker at that point in the distribution, so $181,210 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 38,480, or 0.02% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 8,570 jobs; the top three states sum to 37.7% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Maryland posts a location quotient of 4.01, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $232,120, which is 2.9 times the $80,670 at the 10th, a difference of $151,450 annually. Because the mean wage ($152,310) sits above the median ($140,910), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 8,570 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Washington would lead at $221,990. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Computer and Information Research Scientists stands number 434 by employment and number 38 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Computer and Mathematical Occupations, the group median wage is $103,790 across 21 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 36% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 5,192,870 jobs. In 13 of the 39 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $140,910, 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

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is the largest metro employer with 3,150 jobs, 8.2% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Oklahoma City, OK posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $96,640 a year, against $214,540 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $140,910 works out to $11,742 a month before taxes, $5,420 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,710 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($102,710) to the 75th ($181,210) is worth $78,500 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 $155,001 would sit between the median ($140,910) and the 75th percentile ($181,210), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $102,710, is $38,200 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Computer and Mathematical Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Data Scientists, Software Quality Assurance Analysts and Testers, Information Security Analysts, Computer Network Architects, Computer Network Support Specialists, Web and Digital Interface Designers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.