Occupation / job
Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other
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
At $78,350 against a $50,020 midpoint, Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other pays $28,330 a year more than the typical American job — $13.62 an hour. Nothing pays that much more for free, and the thing it is paid for is what you should be reading about.
Employment stands at 59,930. Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other 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.
These roles suit people who like precise technical work with a defined scope, and who would rather be excellent inside a boundary than accountable for where the boundary is.
We carry no verified training length for Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $60,390 and a quarter above $99,310: a 1.6x ratio, $38,920 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 the bottom quarter of Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other earns $60,390 — $29.03 an hour and $10,370 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you would find it frustrating to execute someone else’s design decisions without the authority to change them.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 59,930 figure counts people already working as Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other, 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 $60,390 and $99,310 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $78,350 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
In cash terms the middle half of Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other runs $60,390 to $99,310 — $38,920 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $78,350.
The 75th percentile is $99,310. Reaching it from the $78,350 midpoint is $20,960 a year; reaching it from the $60,390 that the bottom quarter of Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other earn is $38,920.
The climb from $78,350 to $99,310 is $20,960; the drop to $60,390 is $17,960. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $37.66 at the midpoint for Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other, $29.03 at the 25th percentile and $47.74 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
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 Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $78,350 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Engineering Technologists and Technicians, Except Drafters, All Other, the hourly figure is $78,350 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