Psychologists, All Other 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 Psychologists, All Other ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $73,820. 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

May 2024 employment stood at 17,790, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. Texas leads the state table with 2,160 jobs; the top three states sum to 28.4% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Maine posts a location quotient of 3.71, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $51,410 or less, and one in ten earns $163,570 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 3.2 to 1 and the annual gap is $112,160. The mean ($111,340) versus median ($117,580) comparison shows an unusually symmetric ladder in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts Texas first at 2,160 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, California would lead at $147,650. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Psychologists, All Other stands number 582 by employment and number 76 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 1.2% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 28 of the 44 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $117,580, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,030 jobs, 5.8% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

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, $101,970 a year, against $142,540 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $117,580 works out to $9,798 a month before taxes, $4,522 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,261 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($73,820) to the 75th ($145,200) is worth $71,380 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 $129,338 would sit between the median ($117,580) and the 75th percentile ($145,200), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $73,820, is $43,760 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: Political Scientists, Hydrologists, Historians, Sociologists, Hydrologic Technicians, Animal Scientists. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.