Occupation / job
Biological Technicians
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
Biological Technicians pays $57,510 against $50,020 across all occupations, which is $624 a month ahead. A modest premium, and modest premiums are usually attached to modest requirements — check what this one is attached to.
Employment stands at 69,620. Biological Technicians is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
Science technician roles suit people who want laboratory or field work without a doctorate, and who take real satisfaction in a run that went exactly as the protocol said.
How long it takes to become one of the 69,620 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.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $48,130 to $71,520 — $1,949 a month between the quarters, a 1.5x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The bottom quarter of Biological Technicians earns under $48,130, which is within $1,890 of the $50,020 typical American job. An occupation whose 25th percentile is level with the national middle has an unusually forgiving downside.
Avoid it if you want to set the research question; the technician role executes a protocol it did not choose.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 69,620 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
The quarters are $48,130 and $71,520, a ratio of 1.5x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Biological Technicians is the cost of living where you do it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $48,130 at the 25th percentile, $57,510 at the midpoint, $71,520 at the 75th. $23,390 separates the quarter of Biological Technicians at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $71,520, the 75th percentile, is worth $14,010 a year more than the $57,510 midpoint and $23,390 more than the $48,130 a quarter of Biological Technicians settle for.
$14,010 separates $57,510 from the $71,520 top quarter, while only $9,380 separates it from $48,130. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Biological Technicians has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Biological Technicians is $27.64 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.13 and $34.38, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
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 Biological Technicians for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $57,510 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $57,510 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else