Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers

$109,370 against a $50,020 national midpoint is 119% more, or $28.53 an hour. Almost nothing pays this much more without a long, expensive or restricted route in — read that route before reading the number again.

23,480 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers 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.

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.

How long it takes to become one of the 23,480 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.

A quarter earn below $86,980 and a quarter above $136,600: a 1.6x ratio, $49,620 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.

Even at the 25th percentile Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers pays $86,980, $36,960 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 resent process. Much of the day is producing evidence that the work is correct, not producing the work.

You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 23,480 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.

1.6x between $86,980 and $136,600 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $109,370 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.

The middle half of this field earns between $86,980 and $136,600. That is $49,620 of range, with $109,370 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

The 75th percentile is $136,600. Reaching it from the $109,370 midpoint is $27,230 a year; reaching it from the $86,980 that the bottom quarter of Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers earn is $49,620.

The climb from $109,370 to $136,600 is $27,230; the drop to $86,980 is $22,390. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.

On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Bioengineers and Biomedical Engineers is $52.58 an hour. The quarters sit at $41.81 and $65.67, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.