Natural Sciences Managers

$167,220 puts Natural Sciences Managers among the highest medians BLS publishes, roughly 234% above the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Pay at this level always has a gate in front of it: a residency, a bar exam, a clearance, or a decade.

With 108,690 in the occupation, Natural Sciences Managers is a big field with a visible internal market. Big fields reward moving: the pay you can negotiate on arrival usually beats what the annual review will give you for staying.

These management roles are usually reached by doing the underlying work first, so they suit people who want authority over a craft they already understand rather than management as its own career.

We carry no verified training length for Natural Sciences Managers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.

A quarter of the field earns under $119,430 and a quarter over $221,540: $102,110 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.

The bottom quarter of this field earns $119,430 — $57.41 an hour, $69,410 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Natural Sciences Managers is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.

Avoid it if you would find it hard to manage people you used to work beside as an equal.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 108,690 people employed as Natural Sciences Managers; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.

A ratio of 1.9x — $119,430 to $221,540 — is wide enough that specialising inside Natural Sciences Managers pays measurably. $167,220 is the middle of a range you can move within.

Put in money rather than ratios: $119,430 at the 25th percentile, $167,220 at the midpoint, $221,540 at the 75th. $102,110 separates the quarter of Natural Sciences Managers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.

Between $119,430 and $221,540 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $167,220. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $54,320; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $102,110.

$167,220 sits almost exactly in the middle of its own range — $47,790 above the bottom quarter, $54,320 below the top one. A symmetric distribution like this is the case where the median genuinely does describe the typical person.

Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $80.39 at the midpoint for Natural Sciences Managers, $57.41 at the 25th percentile and $106.50 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.