Occupation / job
Civil Engineering Technologists and 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
The $64,950 midpoint sits $7.17 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 30% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians.
68,520 people are employed in this work. Big enough for a real market in every major metro, small enough that experience in Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians is still a distinguishing thing to have.
Technician and drafting roles suit people who want the technical work without the liability of the stamp, and who are good at being exactly right about details someone else specified.
How long it takes to become one of the 68,520 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
From $51,490 to $80,650 is $2,430 a month, or 1.6x 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.
Even the 25th percentile pays $51,490, $1,470 more than the $50,020 typical American job and $24.75 an hour. The floor, not the median, is the strongest financial argument for Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians.
Avoid it if you want the design authority; without the licence this role does not get it, however good you are.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 68,520 figure counts people already working as Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians, 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 $51,490 and $80,650 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $64,950 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
The middle half of this field earns between $51,490 and $80,650. That is $29,160 of range, with $64,950 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $80,650, the 75th percentile, is worth $15,700 a year more than the $64,950 midpoint and $29,160 more than the $51,490 a quarter of Civil Engineering Technologists and Technicians settle for.
From $64,950 it is $13,460 down to the bottom quarter and $15,700 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $24.75 at the bottom quarter, $31.22 at the midpoint, $38.77 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 $64,950 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.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $64,950 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