Occupation / job
Life Scientists, All Other
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
$93,750 is $3,644 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Life Scientists, All Other are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.
With 7,460 employed nationally, Life Scientists, All Other is a small occupation. Small occupations are quiet: few postings, slow turnover, and a real chance that the person you would replace is not going anywhere.
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.
How long it takes to become one of the 7,460 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
A quarter of the field earns under $68,990 and a quarter over $131,910: $62,920 between them, a ratio of 1.9x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.
At $68,990, or $33.16 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $18,970 above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Occupations with floors this high almost always have a requirement holding them there.
Avoid it if a career built on renewable funding would be too precarious for your circumstances.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 7,460 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
At 1.9x, the distribution for Life Scientists, All Other is open enough that specialisation starts to pay. The distance from $68,990 to $131,910 is mostly what you can do that others in the same title cannot.
Put in money rather than ratios: $68,990 at the 25th percentile, $93,750 at the midpoint, $131,910 at the 75th. $62,920 separates the quarter of Life Scientists, All Other at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $68,990 and $131,910 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $93,750. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $38,160; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $62,920.
The climb from $93,750 to $131,910 is $38,160, against $24,760 down to $68,990. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Life Scientists, All Other is larger than the realistic downside.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $45.07 at the midpoint for Life Scientists, All Other, $33.16 at the 25th percentile and $63.41 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $93,750 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 $93,750 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