Occupation / job
Biochemists and Biophysicists
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 $127,410 midpoint is $6,449 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Biochemists and Biophysicists near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
33,830 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Biochemists and Biophysicists becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.
Life science work suits people who can run a protocol faithfully for months and treat a negative result as information rather than as a wasted season.
We carry no verified training length for Biochemists and Biophysicists — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$68,460 separates the bottom quarter of Biochemists and Biophysicists at $95,000 from the top quarter at $163,460. At a 1.7x ratio the midpoint is a weak guide to your own first year — find out which end you would be entering at.
Even at the 25th percentile Biochemists and Biophysicists pays $95,000, $44,980 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Almost the entire distribution sits above the typical American wage, which is rare and worth weighing against the entry cost.
Avoid it if you need short feedback loops, or security that does not depend on a grant being renewed.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 33,830 people employed as Biochemists and Biophysicists; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
A ratio of 1.7x — $95,000 to $163,460 — is wide enough that specialising inside Biochemists and Biophysicists pays measurably. $127,410 is the middle of a range you can move within.
Put in money rather than ratios: $95,000 at the 25th percentile, $127,410 at the midpoint, $163,460 at the 75th. $68,460 separates the quarter of Biochemists and Biophysicists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $163,460, the 75th percentile, is worth $36,050 a year more than the $127,410 midpoint and $68,460 more than the $95,000 a quarter of Biochemists and Biophysicists settle for.
$127,410 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $32,410 above the bottom quarter, $36,050 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $45.67 at the bottom quarter, $61.25 at the midpoint, $78.58 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
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Biochemists and Biophysicists. The self-employed are excluded, so $127,410 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $127,410 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Biochemists and Biophysicists, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else