Occupation / job
Social Science Research Assistants
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
A $61,990 midpoint puts Social Science Research Assistants $11,970 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 24% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
At 30,640 employed, this is a mid-sized occupation. In a normal city that means several possible employers and a genuine market rate, which is the point at which knowing the numbers on this page starts to be worth money.
Science technician roles suit people who want laboratory or field work without a doctorate, and who take real satisfaction in a run that went exactly as the protocol said.
How long it takes to become one of the 30,640 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
From $48,620 to $77,760 is $2,428 a month, or 1.6x 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 bottom quarter of Social Science Research Assistants earns under $48,620, which is within $1,400 of the $50,020 typical American job. An occupation whose 25th percentile is level with the national middle has an unusually forgiving downside.
Avoid it if you want to set the research question; the technician role executes a protocol it did not choose.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 30,640 figure counts people already working as Social Science Research Assistants, 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
At 1.6x between $48,620 and $77,760 this is a normally shaped occupation. $61,990 is what the middle of Social Science Research Assistants earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $48,620 and $77,760. That is $29,140 of range, with $61,990 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $48,620 and $77,760 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $61,990. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $15,770; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $29,140.
The climb from $61,990 to $77,760 is $15,770; the drop to $48,620 is $13,370. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Social Science Research Assistants and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $29.80 at the midpoint for Social Science Research Assistants, $23.37 at the 25th percentile and $37.38 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $61,990 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.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Social Science Research Assistants, the hourly figure is $61,990 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