Occupation / job
Industrial 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
$102,440 is $4,368 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Industrial Engineers are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.
This is a large occupation: 365,740 people work as Industrial Engineers. Large occupations hire continuously and replace continuously, and the pay reflects both facts.
Engineering suits people willing to be responsible for something that has to work in the physical world, where the review process exists because the failure mode is not a bug report.
No verified preparation time is on file for Industrial 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
From $83,600 to $129,250 is $3,804 a month, or 1.5x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
The 25th percentile is $83,600, $33,580 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 would find the pace frustrating — the review and approval cycle is deliberately slower than the design work.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 365,740 figure counts people already working as Industrial 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
A 1.5x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $102,440 as where you might be after years in Industrial Engineers, and $83,600 as where you would start.
In cash terms the middle half of Industrial Engineers runs $83,600 to $129,250 — $45,650 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $102,440.
The 75th percentile is $129,250. Reaching it from the $102,440 midpoint is $26,810 a year; reaching it from the $83,600 that the bottom quarter of Industrial Engineers earn is $45,650.
$26,810 separates $102,440 from the $129,250 top quarter, while only $18,840 separates it from $83,600. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Industrial Engineers has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Industrial Engineers is $49.25 an hour. The quarters sit at $40.19 and $62.13, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
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 Industrial Engineers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $102,440 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $102,440 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