Occupation / job
Surveying and Mapping Technicians
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 $54,240 midpoint puts Surveying and Mapping Technicians $351 a month ahead of the $50,020 typical American job. Real, but small enough that a change of employer or metro would move it as much as the occupation itself does.
Employment stands at 58,010. Surveying and Mapping Technicians is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
Technician and drafting roles suit people who want the technical work without the liability of the stamp, and who are good at being exactly right about details someone else specified.
We carry no verified training length for Surveying and Mapping Technicians — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $45,430 to $66,700 — $1,772 a month between the quarters, a 1.5x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The bottom quarter of Surveying and Mapping Technicians earns under $45,430, which is within $4,590 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 the design authority; without the licence this role does not get it, however good you are.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 58,010 people employed as Surveying and Mapping Technicians; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.5x. In a band that narrow, $54,240 is a genuinely representative number for Surveying and Mapping Technicians and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $45,430 at the 25th percentile, $54,240 at the midpoint, $66,700 at the 75th. $21,270 separates the quarter of Surveying and Mapping Technicians at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $66,700, the 75th percentile, is worth $12,460 a year more than the $54,240 midpoint and $21,270 more than the $45,430 a quarter of Surveying and Mapping Technicians settle for.
$12,460 separates $54,240 from the $66,700 top quarter, while only $8,810 separates it from $45,430. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Surveying and Mapping Technicians has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $26.07 at the midpoint for Surveying and Mapping Technicians, $21.84 at the 25th percentile and $32.06 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Surveying and Mapping Technicians. The self-employed are excluded, so $54,240 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $54,240 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