Operations Research Analysts

$88,940 against a $50,020 national midpoint is 78% more, or $18.71 an hour. Almost nothing pays this much more without a long, expensive or restricted route in — read that route before reading the number again.

108,510 people are employed as Operations Research Analysts. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.

Mathematical science work suits people who are willing to be the person who says the estimate is uncertain, and who can explain why to an audience that wanted a single number.

No verified preparation time is on file for Operations Research Analysts. 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.

A quarter of the field earns under $68,360 and a quarter over $125,990: $57,630 between them, a ratio of 1.8x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.

At $68,360, or $32.86 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $18,340 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 you need your conclusions accepted; a large part of this job is being overruled by someone who preferred a different number.

You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 108,510 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.

From $68,360 to $125,990 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $88,940 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.

In cash terms the middle half of Operations Research Analysts runs $68,360 to $125,990 — $57,630 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $88,940.

The 75th percentile is $125,990. Reaching it from the $88,940 midpoint is $37,050 a year; reaching it from the $68,360 that the bottom quarter of Operations Research Analysts earn is $57,630.

The distance from the midpoint up to $125,990 is $37,050 — well over the $20,580 down to $68,360. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Operations Research Analysts earns, and half the field is in that upper half.

Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $42.75 at the midpoint for Operations Research Analysts, $32.86 at the 25th percentile and $60.57 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.