Industrial-Organizational Psychologists 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 ($51,880) to the 90th ($224,590). 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 1,050, or 0.00% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 100 jobs; the top three states sum to 17.1% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Oregon posts a location quotient of 5.77, 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 $224,590, which is 4.3 times the $51,880 at the 10th, a difference of $172,710 annually. Because the mean wage ($134,400) sits above the median ($109,840), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $140,540, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Industrial-Organizational Psychologists stands number 818 by employment and number 83 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 31% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 2 of the 3 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $109,840, 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

The May 2024 survey could not support metropolitan estimates for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists at its reliability standards, so none are printed. Use the state medians above for local pricing, and treat any finer-grained figure from another source as an estimate with an agenda.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Industrial-Organizational Psychologists paycheck, gross, is $4,225 every two weeks on an annual $109,840, which is $9,153 a month and $2,112 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($80,790) to the 75th ($198,170) is worth $117,380 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $120,824 would sit between the median ($109,840) and the 75th percentile ($198,170), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $80,790, is $29,050 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Materials Scientists, Anthropologists and Archeologists, Survey Researchers, Life Scientists, All Other, Nuclear Technicians, Political Scientists. The full directory is on the Careers hub.