Occupation / job
Aerospace Engineers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
$134,960 puts Aerospace Engineers among the highest medians BLS publishes, roughly 170% above the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Pay at this level always has a gate in front of it: a residency, a bar exam, a clearance, or a decade.
67,710 people are employed as Aerospace Engineers. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.
Engineering suits people willing to be responsible for something that has to work in the physical world, where the review process exists because the failure mode is not a bug report.
We carry no verified training length for Aerospace Engineers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$106,110 to $169,690 — 1.6x, or $5,298 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Aerospace Engineers is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $106,110 — $51.01 an hour, $56,090 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Aerospace Engineers is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
Avoid it if you would find the pace frustrating — the review and approval cycle is deliberately slower than the design work.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 67,710 figure counts people already working as Aerospace Engineers, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
1.6x between $106,110 and $169,690 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $134,960 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
Put in money rather than ratios: $106,110 at the 25th percentile, $134,960 at the midpoint, $169,690 at the 75th. $63,580 separates the quarter of Aerospace Engineers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $169,690. Reaching it from the $134,960 midpoint is $34,730 a year; reaching it from the $106,110 that the bottom quarter of Aerospace Engineers earn is $63,580.
The climb from $134,960 to $169,690 is $34,730; the drop to $106,110 is $28,850. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Aerospace Engineers and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $64.88 at the midpoint for Aerospace Engineers, $51.01 at the 25th percentile and $81.58 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Aerospace Engineers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $134,960 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Aerospace Engineers, the hourly figure is $134,960 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else