Occupation / job
Astronomers
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
The $128,820 midpoint is $6,566 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Astronomers near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
Employment as Astronomers stands at 2,120. That is small enough that your local market may have a dozen posts in total; mobility will matter more to your earnings than seniority does.
These roles suit people who want to work on physical systems at a level of rigour that industry rarely funds, and who accept the career shape that comes with that.
We carry no verified training length for Astronomers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
From $99,920 to $166,000 is $5,506 a month, or 1.7x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
The 25th percentile is $99,920, $49,900 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if your household cannot absorb the geography — the instruments and the posts are in a small number of places.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 2,120 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.7x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $128,820 as where you might be after years in Astronomers, and $99,920 as where you would start.
Put in money rather than ratios: $99,920 at the 25th percentile, $128,820 at the midpoint, $166,000 at the 75th. $66,080 separates the quarter of Astronomers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $166,000. Reaching it from the $128,820 midpoint is $37,180 a year; reaching it from the $99,920 that the bottom quarter of Astronomers earn is $66,080.
The climb from $128,820 to $166,000 is $37,180; the drop to $99,920 is $28,900. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Astronomers and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $48.03 at the bottom quarter, $61.93 at the midpoint, $79.80 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $128,820 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Astronomers, the hourly figure is $128,820 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