Epidemiologists 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 ($56,950) to the 90th ($134,860). 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

May 2024 employment stood at 11,460, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 1,590 jobs; the top three states sum to 30.5% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Washington posts a location quotient of 3.65, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $56,950 or less, and one in ten earns $134,860 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.4 to 1 and the annual gap is $77,910. The mean ($94,160) versus median ($83,980) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 42 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is New Jersey at $110,240; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Epidemiologists stands number 670 by employment and number 187 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 0% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.8% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 14 of the 41 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $83,980, 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

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA is the largest metro employer with 530 jobs, 4.6% 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, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $99,200 a year, against $108,930 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

As a household number, $83,980 a year is $6,998 a month gross, $3,230 every two weeks, $1,615 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($68,040) to the 75th ($106,040) is worth $38,000 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 $6,998 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 $92,378 would sit between the median ($83,980) and the 75th percentile ($106,040), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $68,040, is $15,940 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

Sibling occupations in Life, Physical, and Social Science Occupations: School Psychologists, Biological Scientists, All Other, Chemical Technicians, Urban and Regional Planners, Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health, Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.