Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($50,130) to the 90th ($134,830). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

With 84,930 jobs nationally, Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health make up 0.06% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 13,200 of those jobs, the top three states hold 27.5%, and the deepest concentration sits in District of Columbia (location quotient 3.78, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $50,130 or less, and one in ten earns $134,830 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.7 to 1 and the annual gap is $84,700. The mean ($88,640) versus median ($80,060) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

The state spread for Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health runs from the $122,440 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (13,200 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health stands number 293 by employment and number 208 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 5% less than its group median, and it supplies 5.9% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 18 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $80,060, 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

Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, CA is the largest metro employer with 3,390 jobs, 4.0% 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, Tallahassee, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $54,950 a year, against $119,560 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

As a household number, $80,060 a year is $6,672 a month gross, $3,079 every two weeks, $1,540 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($62,090) to the 75th ($103,730) is worth $41,640 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $6,672 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $88,066 would sit between the median ($80,060) and the 75th percentile ($103,730), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $62,090, is $17,970 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: Forest and Conservation Technicians, Conservation Scientists, Physical Scientists, All Other, Geoscientists, Except Hydrologists and Geographers, Physicists, Microbiologists. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.