Economists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Economists ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $82,260. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 15,880 Economists jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in District of Columbia, where the location quotient is 41.26, meaning the occupation holds 41.26 times its national share of local jobs. District of Columbia employs the most people outright, 3,010 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 33.9% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $82,260 at the 25th percentile, $115,440 at the middle, $166,030 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $150,370, a ratio of 3.4 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Economists runs from the $162,610 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in District of Columbia (3,010 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Economists stands number 602 by employment and number 77 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 37% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.1% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 8 of the 40 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $115,440, 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 4,300 jobs, 27.1% 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, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $151,950 a year, against $182,320 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $9,620 a month before tax, $4,440 biweekly, $2,220 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($82,260) to the 75th ($166,030) is worth $83,770 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 $126,984 would sit between the median ($115,440) and the 75th percentile ($166,030), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $82,260, is $33,180 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: Psychologists, All Other, Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists, Soil and Plant Scientists, Food Scientists and Technologists, Agricultural Technicians, Food Science Technicians. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.