Sociologists 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 Sociologists ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $78,150. 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 2,950 people in May 2024, 0.00% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 660 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 50.8% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Massachusetts, whose location quotient of 8.57 says this work is 8.57 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $78,150 at the 25th percentile, $101,690 at the middle, $134,780 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $107,880, a ratio of 2.8 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

Oregon posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $211,560, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Sociologists stands number 789 by employment and number 113 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 21% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 6 of the 13 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $101,690, 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 570 jobs, 19.3% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 14 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, Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $117,910 a year, against $117,910 in Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH. 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

The median annual wage of $101,690 works out to $8,474 a month before taxes, $3,911 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,956 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($78,150) to the 75th ($134,780) is worth $56,630 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 $111,859 would sit between the median ($101,690) and the 75th percentile ($134,780), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $78,150, is $23,540 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: Nuclear Technicians, Political Scientists, Hydrologists, Historians, Hydrologic Technicians, Animal Scientists. The full directory is on the Careers hub.