Occupation / job
Soil and Plant Scientists
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 midpoint of $78,850 against $50,020 means Soil and Plant Scientists pays $2,402 a month more than the typical American job. At that distance the entry requirement is the real subject, because it is what the premium is buying.
Employment as Soil and Plant Scientists is 15,730 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
This work suits people patient enough to let an experiment take the time it takes, in a field where the interesting result is usually years behind the interesting question.
No verified preparation time is on file for Soil and Plant Scientists. 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.
Who should not do this
From $61,660 to $103,740 is $3,506 a month, or 1.7x 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.
At $61,660, or $29.64 an hour, the 25th percentile sits $11,640 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 short feedback loops, or security that does not depend on a grant being renewed.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 15,730 figure counts people already working as Soil and Plant Scientists, 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
1.7x between $61,660 and $103,740 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $78,850 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
Put in money rather than ratios: $61,660 at the 25th percentile, $78,850 at the midpoint, $103,740 at the 75th. $42,080 separates the quarter of Soil and Plant Scientists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $103,740, the 75th percentile, is worth $24,890 a year more than the $78,850 midpoint and $42,080 more than the $61,660 a quarter of Soil and Plant Scientists settle for.
$24,890 separates $78,850 from the $103,740 top quarter, while only $17,190 separates it from $61,660. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Soil and Plant Scientists has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $29.64 at the bottom quarter, $37.90 at the midpoint, $49.87 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
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Soil and Plant Scientists for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $78,850 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $78,850 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else