Occupation / job
Food Scientists and Technologists
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
$88,720 is $3,225 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Food Scientists and Technologists are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.
Nationally 13,060 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Food Scientists and Technologists is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
Life science work suits people who can run a protocol faithfully for months and treat a negative result as information rather than as a wasted season.
We carry no verified training length for Food Scientists and Technologists — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$68,810 to $116,650 — 1.7x, or $3,986 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Food Scientists and Technologists is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
Even the bottom quarter of Food Scientists and Technologists earns $68,810 — $33.08 an hour and $18,790 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if a career built on renewable funding would be too precarious for your circumstances.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 13,060 figure counts people already working as Food Scientists and Technologists, 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 1.7x between $68,810 and $116,650 this is a normally shaped occupation. $88,720 is what the middle of Food Scientists and Technologists earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
In cash terms the middle half of Food Scientists and Technologists runs $68,810 to $116,650 — $47,840 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $88,720.
The 75th percentile is $116,650. Reaching it from the $88,720 midpoint is $27,930 a year; reaching it from the $68,810 that the bottom quarter of Food Scientists and Technologists earn is $47,840.
The climb from $88,720 to $116,650 is $27,930, against $19,910 down to $68,810. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Food Scientists and Technologists is larger than the realistic downside.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $33.08 at the bottom quarter, $42.65 at the midpoint, $56.08 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 $88,720 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 $88,720 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