Physical Scientists, All Other Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Physical Scientists, All Other offer sit among all 22,580 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 22,580 jobs nationally, Physical Scientists, All Other make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 2,220 of those jobs, the top three states hold 26.3%, and the deepest concentration sits in District of Columbia (location quotient 8.28, 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: $82,450 at the 25th percentile, $117,960 at the middle, $154,900 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $129,890, a ratio of 3.1 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

The state spread for Physical Scientists, All Other runs from the $167,110 median in Minnesota down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (2,220 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Physical Scientists, All Other stands number 534 by employment and number 74 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 40% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.6% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 15 of the 42 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $117,960, 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 2,720 jobs, 12.0% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Indianapolis-Carmel-Greenwood, IN posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $69,610 a year, against $156,430 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $9,830 a month before tax, $4,537 biweekly, $2,268 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($82,450) to the 75th ($154,900) is worth $72,450 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 $129,756 would sit between the median ($117,960) and the 75th percentile ($154,900), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $82,450, is $35,510 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Chemists, Biological Technicians, Clinical and Counseling Psychologists, Life, Physical, and Social Science Technicians, All Other, School Psychologists, Biological Scientists, All Other. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.