Environmental Engineers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Environmental Engineers offer sit among all 37,950 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

BLS counted 37,950 Environmental Engineers 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 3.03, meaning the occupation holds 3.03 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 4,770 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 23.8% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $161,910, which is 2.5 times the $64,950 at the 10th, a difference of $96,960 annually. Because the mean wage ($110,570) sits above the median ($104,170), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Environmental Engineers runs from the $130,370 median in Oregon down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (4,770 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Environmental Engineers stands number 437 by employment and number 100 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 8% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.5% of the group's 2,567,220 jobs. In 17 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $104,170, 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 1,610 jobs, 4.2% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 158 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $102,140 a year, against $142,400 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $104,170 works out to $8,681 a month before taxes, $4,007 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,003 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($80,510) to the 75th ($130,830) is worth $50,320 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 $114,587 would sit between the median ($104,170) and the 75th percentile ($130,830), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $80,510, is $23,660 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Electro-Mechanical and Mechatronics Technologists and Technicians, Cartographers and Photogrammetrists, Environmental Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Aerospace Engineering and Operations Technologists and Technicians, Marine Engineers and Naval Architects, Mining and Geological Engineers, Including Mining Safety Engineers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.