Occupation / job
Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health
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
Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health pays $55,090 against $50,020 across all occupations, which is $422 a month ahead. A modest premium, and modest premiums are usually attached to modest requirements — check what this one is attached to.
34,670 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health 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.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health. 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 $45,820 and a quarter above $69,910: a 1.5x ratio, $24,090 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.
At $45,820 — $22.02 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if you want to set the research question; the technician role executes a protocol it did not choose.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 34,670 figure counts people already working as Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health, 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
At 1.5x between $45,820 and $69,910 this is a normally shaped occupation. $55,090 is what the middle of Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
Put in money rather than ratios: $45,820 at the 25th percentile, $55,090 at the midpoint, $69,910 at the 75th. $24,090 separates the quarter of Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $69,910. Reaching it from the $55,090 midpoint is $14,820 a year; reaching it from the $45,820 that the bottom quarter of Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health earn is $24,090.
The distance from the midpoint up to $69,910 is $14,820 — well over the $9,270 down to $45,820. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $22.02 at the bottom quarter, $26.48 at the midpoint, $33.61 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
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $55,090 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health, the hourly figure is $55,090 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