Geological Technicians, Except Hydrologic Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Geological Technicians, Except Hydrologic Technicians worker at that point in the distribution, so $64,470 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

May 2024 employment stood at 9,710, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 3,670 jobs; the top three states sum to 54.1% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Oklahoma posts a location quotient of 7.01, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $92,210, which is 2.8 times the $32,830 at the 10th, a difference of $59,380 annually. Because the mean wage ($58,220) sits above the median ($48,390), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts Texas first at 3,670 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Nevada would lead at $72,440. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Geological Technicians, Except Hydrologic Technicians stands number 689 by employment and number 566 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 42% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 21 of the 31 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $48,390, 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

Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX is the largest metro employer with 920 jobs, 9.5% 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, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $53,290 a year, against $63,990 in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX. 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

The median annual wage of $48,390 works out to $4,032 a month before taxes, $1,861 per biweekly paycheck, and $931 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($39,200) to the 75th ($64,470) is worth $25,270 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 $53,229 would sit between the median ($48,390) and the 75th percentile ($64,470), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $39,200, is $9,190 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Soil and Plant Scientists, Economists, Food Scientists and Technologists, Agricultural Technicians, Food Science Technicians, Epidemiologists. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.