Microbiologists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Microbiologists ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $63,920. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 19,760 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 2,510 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 33.7% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Maryland, whose location quotient of 5.79 says this work is 5.79 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $99,430 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($150,650) is 2.9 times the 10th percentile ($51,220), a gap of $99,430 a year. The mean of $95,200 sitting above the median of $87,330 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Massachusetts posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $126,260, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Microbiologists stands number 565 by employment and number 172 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 4% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.4% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 8 of the 42 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $87,330, 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

Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH is the largest metro employer with 1,790 jobs, 9.1% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 70 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, Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $80,900 a year, against $129,900 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $7,278 a month before tax, $3,359 biweekly, $1,679 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($63,920) to the 75th ($120,750) is worth $56,830 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $96,063 would sit between the median ($87,330) and the 75th percentile ($120,750), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $63,920, is $23,410 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: Urban and Regional Planners, Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health, Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other, Biochemists and Biophysicists, Social Science Research Assistants, Occupational Health and Safety Technicians. The full directory is on the Careers hub.