Museum Technicians and Conservators 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 Museum Technicians and Conservators ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $37,460. 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

With 13,070 jobs nationally, Museum Technicians and Conservators make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 1,790 of those jobs, the top three states hold 29.5%, and the deepest concentration sits in District of Columbia (location quotient 8.61, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $37,460 at the 25th percentile, $47,460 at the middle, $62,990 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $52,070, a ratio of 2.7 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

District of Columbia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $74,300, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Museum Technicians and Conservators stands number 641 by employment and number 580 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Educational Instruction and Library Occupations, the group median wage is $76,210 across 64 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 38% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 8,947,690 jobs. In 18 of the 47 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $47,460, 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

Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV is the largest metro employer with 980 jobs, 7.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 65 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, St. Louis, MO-IL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $49,970 a year, against $78,480 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. 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: $3,955 a month before tax, $1,825 biweekly, $913 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($37,460) to the 75th ($62,990) is worth $25,530 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 $52,206 would sit between the median ($47,460) and the 75th percentile ($62,990), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $37,460, is $10,000 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Educational Instruction and Library Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Secondary School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education, Middle School Teachers, Except Special and Career/Technical Education, Substitute Teachers, Short-Term, Preschool Teachers, Except Special Education, Self-Enrichment Teachers, Special Education Teachers, Kindergarten and Elementary School. The full directory is on the Careers hub.