Occupation / job
Food Science 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
$52,130 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $2,110 apart. Food Science Technicians pays what the average job pays, so the decision has to be made on the work, the entry cost and the spread rather than on the wage.
Nationally 14,600 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Food Science Technicians is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
These roles suit people who want to be in the lab or the field without the grant-writing, and who take the craft of measurement seriously in its own right.
How long it takes to become one of the 14,600 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
Between $46,020 and $63,270 there is $17,250, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
The bottom quarter of Food Science Technicians earns under $46,020, which is within $4,000 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. 14,600 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
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $52,130 is a genuinely representative number for Food Science Technicians and the main variable left is where you live.
In cash terms the middle half of Food Science Technicians runs $46,020 to $63,270 — $17,250 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $52,130.
The 75th percentile is $63,270. Reaching it from the $52,130 midpoint is $11,140 a year; reaching it from the $46,020 that the bottom quarter of Food Science Technicians earn is $17,250.
It is $6,110 from $52,130 down to $46,020 but $11,140 up to $63,270. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Food Science Technicians is $25.06 an hour. The quarters sit at $22.12 and $30.41, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Food Science Technicians. The self-employed are excluded, so $52,130 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Food Science Technicians, the hourly figure is $52,130 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