Atmospheric and Space Scientists
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for atmospheric and space scientists. Best paid: Maryland, at $128,800. Tax does not change that. Best off: Idaho, at $95,567 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- Maryland's $128,800 median for atmospheric and space scientists survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Idaho takes the top position at $95,567. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$99,070
People doing it
10,000
Highest paid
$128,800
MD
Best off, really
$95,567
ID, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$53,060
Highest tenth
$161,890
Lowest, really
$34,730
NH
States with data
47
National average
$106,110
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
91.42%
ID, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $34,730 up to $95,567.
- Only 10,000 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- This job is not published everywhere — 47 jurisdictions have a figure, with $99,070 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Maryland tops the ones that are.
- The nominal spread for atmospheric and space scientists approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $34,730 to $95,567, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in atmospheric and space scientists is 10,000. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- 47 jurisdictions carry a published median for atmospheric and space scientists. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Atmospheric and Space Scientists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $53,060 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $99,070 |
| Top tenth earn over | $161,890 |
| This salary | $99,070 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Atmospheric and Space Scientists
The national median for this job
$99,070around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $53,060 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $99,070 |
| Top tenth | $161,890 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Atmospheric and Space Scientists, state by state
The national median for this job
47states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Hampshire · $42,820 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Maryland · $128,800 |
| Spread | $85,980 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $84,990 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $87,461 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| ID | $119,430 | $87,373 | $95,567 |
| MO | $114,230 | $84,759 | $92,369 |
| NM | $110,070 | $82,202 | $90,945 |
| MD | $128,800 | $93,371 | $89,810 |
| MT | $108,890 | $80,643 | $89,361 |
| KS | $109,300 | $79,912 | $88,826 |
| NV | $109,300 | $85,723 | $88,392 |
| FL | $115,960 | $90,408 | $87,391 |
| WY | $99,940 | $79,138 | $87,110 |
| AZ | $115,020 | $87,274 | $86,320 |
| KY | $103,240 | $77,964 | $86,178 |
| IN | $103,680 | $78,740 | $85,416 |
| LA | $97,470 | $74,862 | $84,739 |
| IL | $112,280 | $82,406 | $83,360 |
| TN | $96,190 | $76,500 | $82,689 |
| ND | $91,560 | $72,716 | $82,098 |
| MI | $103,210 | $77,303 | $82,076 |
| NJ | $120,180 | $87,911 | $80,739 |
| NY | $117,540 | $85,512 | $79,453 |
| HI | $121,010 | $86,207 | $79,374 |
| CA | $124,920 | $89,123 | $79,164 |
| MN | $106,270 | $77,888 | $79,141 |
| ME | $103,710 | $76,017 | $78,290 |
| CO | $104,670 | $78,568 | $77,497 |
| UT | $96,520 | $72,437 | $76,248 |
| GA | $96,820 | $72,710 | $75,192 |
| OR | $112,260 | $78,532 | $74,992 |
| NC | $91,560 | $70,098 | $74,462 |
| AK | $94,380 | $75,226 | $73,958 |
| MA | $108,050 | $79,761 | $73,690 |
| SD | $78,900 | $64,336 | $73,030 |
| TX | $84,990 | $68,620 | $70,615 |
| WI | $85,870 | $65,597 | $70,460 |
| WV | $80,690 | $62,789 | $69,943 |
| AL | $81,080 | $62,431 | $69,391 |
| WA | $94,400 | $75,240 | $69,306 |
| DC | $103,860 | $76,036 | $68,622 |
| OH | $78,580 | $62,666 | $68,255 |
| IA | $76,850 | $60,585 | $68,252 |
| SC | $82,240 | $63,548 | $68,202 |
| OK | $76,480 | $59,693 | $67,613 |
| AR | $71,940 | $57,237 | $66,163 |
| VA | $83,880 | $63,777 | $63,303 |
| CT | $85,110 | $64,774 | $62,469 |
| PA | $75,890 | $59,889 | $61,424 |
| NE | $60,540 | $48,773 | $53,967 |
| NH | $42,820 | $36,586 | $34,730 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for atmospheric and space scientists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $99,070, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for atmospheric and space scientists, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Maryland, at $93,371.
- Levelling out prices for atmospheric and space scientists is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — New Hampshire sits at the bottom on $34,730.
- These are distribution medians for atmospheric and space scientists, with a national value of $99,070. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for atmospheric and space scientists model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $93,371, which leads in Maryland.
- The price deflation applied to atmospheric and space scientists uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is New Hampshire at $34,730. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — New Hampshire anchors the bottom at $34,730 — and the two source series are dated independently.