Occupation / job
Nuclear 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
$133,970 puts Nuclear Engineers among the highest medians BLS publishes, roughly 168% 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.
Nationally 15,280 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Nuclear Engineers is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
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.
We carry no verified training length for Nuclear Engineers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn below $108,690 and a quarter above $163,630: a 1.5x ratio, $54,940 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
Even at the 25th percentile Nuclear Engineers pays $108,690, $58,670 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Almost the entire distribution sits above the typical American wage, which is rare and worth weighing against the entry cost.
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 15,280 figure counts people already working as Nuclear 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
1.5x between $108,690 and $163,630 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $133,970 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
Put in money rather than ratios: $108,690 at the 25th percentile, $133,970 at the midpoint, $163,630 at the 75th. $54,940 separates the quarter of Nuclear Engineers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $163,630. Reaching it from the $133,970 midpoint is $29,660 a year; reaching it from the $108,690 that the bottom quarter of Nuclear Engineers earn is $54,940.
From $133,970 it is $25,280 down to the bottom quarter and $29,660 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $52.25 at the bottom quarter, $64.40 at the midpoint, $78.66 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
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Nuclear Engineers. The self-employed are excluded, so $133,970 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Nuclear Engineers, the hourly figure is $133,970 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