Conservation Scientists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Conservation Scientists worker at that point in the distribution, so $87,980 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

BLS counted 25,590 Conservation Scientists jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Alaska, where the location quotient is 6.02, meaning the occupation holds 6.02 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 2,070 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 21.2% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $45,260 or less, and one in ten earns $107,720 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.4 to 1 and the annual gap is $62,460. The mean ($74,310) versus median ($67,950) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Conservation Scientists runs from the $86,170 median in Oregon down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (2,070 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Conservation Scientists stands number 506 by employment and number 299 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 19% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.8% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 25 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $67,950, 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 700 jobs, 2.7% 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, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $75,980 a year, against $95,950 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $5,662 a month before tax, $2,613 biweekly, $1,307 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($53,190) to the 75th ($87,980) is worth $34,790 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 $74,745 would sit between the median ($67,950) and the 75th percentile ($87,980), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $53,190, is $14,760 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: Geological Technicians, Except Hydrologic Technicians, Foresters, Atmospheric and Space Scientists, Materials Scientists, Anthropologists and Archeologists, Survey Researchers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.