Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other

$101,110 is $4,257 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Social Scientists and Related Workers, 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.

37,100 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.

This work suits people who can hold a research question steady through the years it takes to answer, and who are comfortable that the answer may be politically inconvenient.

How long it takes to become one of the 37,100 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.

From $80,860 to $129,960 is $4,091 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.

Even at the 25th percentile Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other pays $80,860, $30,840 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 it hard to publish a finding that a funder, a discipline or the public did not want.

You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 37,100 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.

At 1.6x between $80,860 and $129,960 this is a normally shaped occupation. $101,110 is what the middle of Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.

In cash terms the middle half of Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other runs $80,860 to $129,960 — $49,100 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $101,110.

The 75th percentile is $129,960. Reaching it from the $101,110 midpoint is $28,850 a year; reaching it from the $80,860 that the bottom quarter of Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other earn is $49,100.

$28,850 separates $101,110 from the $129,960 top quarter, while only $20,250 separates it from $80,860. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.

Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $48.61 at the midpoint for Social Scientists and Related Workers, All Other, $38.87 at the 25th percentile and $62.48 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.