Occupation / job
Environmental Engineers
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
$107,110 against a $50,020 national midpoint is 114% more, or $27.44 an hour. Almost nothing pays this much more without a long, expensive or restricted route in — read that route before reading the number again.
With 38,340 employed as Environmental Engineers, most metros have a working market: several employers, visible turnover, and the ability to change jobs without moving house.
Engineering suits people who want their work checked. Sign-off, code compliance and design review are the job, not friction added to it.
No verified preparation time is on file for Environmental Engineers. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $83,570 and a quarter above $134,420: a 1.6x ratio, $50,850 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.
The 25th percentile is $83,570, $33,550 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if you resent process. Much of the day is producing evidence that the work is correct, not producing the work.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 38,340 figure counts people already working as Environmental Engineers, 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 $83,570 and $134,420 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $107,110 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
The middle half of this field earns between $83,570 and $134,420. That is $50,850 of range, with $107,110 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $83,570 and $134,420 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $107,110. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $27,310; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $50,850.
The climb from $107,110 to $134,420 is $27,310; the drop to $83,570 is $23,540. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Environmental Engineers 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 $51.49 at the midpoint for Environmental Engineers, $40.17 at the 25th percentile and $64.62 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 Environmental Engineers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $107,110 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Environmental Engineers, the hourly figure is $107,110 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