Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists offer sit among all 16,920 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

The occupation employed 16,920 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. Washington is the largest employer at 1,800 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 27.1% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Alaska, whose location quotient of 19.48 says this work is 19.48 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $113,350, which is 2.3 times the $48,240 at the 10th, a difference of $65,110 annually. Because the mean wage ($77,920) sits above the median ($72,860), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists runs from the $97,050 median in Rhode Island down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Washington (1,800 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists stands number 589 by employment and number 267 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 13% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.2% of the group's 1,446,780 jobs. In 21 of the 48 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $72,860, 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

Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA is the largest metro employer with 730 jobs, 4.3% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 100 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, Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $100,570 a year, against $100,570 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. 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 Zoologists and Wildlife Biologists paycheck, gross, is $2,802 every two weeks on an annual $72,860, which is $6,072 a month and $1,401 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($58,360) to the 75th ($90,590) is worth $32,230 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $80,146 would sit between the median ($72,860) and the 75th percentile ($90,590), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $58,360, is $14,500 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: Life, Physical, and Social Science Technicians, All Other, School Psychologists, Biological Scientists, All Other, Chemical Technicians, Urban and Regional Planners, Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.