Conservation Scientists
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for conservation scientists. Best paid: the District of Columbia, at $99,400. Tax does not change that. Best off: Wyoming, at $72,684 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- The District of Columbia's $99,400 median for conservation 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: Wyoming takes the top position at $72,684. 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
$73,010
People doing it
25,950
Highest paid
$99,400
DC
Best off, really
$72,684
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$47,550
Highest tenth
$110,410
Lowest, really
$41,819
FL
States with data
51
National average
$77,130
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $41,819 to $72,684.
- This is a small job: about 25,950 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $73,010, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation in conservation scientists pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $41,819 to $72,684, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 25,950 workers, conservation scientists is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for conservation scientists, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Conservation Scientists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $47,550 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $73,010 |
| Top tenth earn over | $110,410 |
| This salary | $73,010 |
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 Conservation Scientists
The national median for this job
$73,010around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $47,550 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $73,010 |
| Top tenth | $110,410 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Conservation Scientists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Florida · $51,130 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $99,400 |
| Spread | $48,270 |
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 | $68,620 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $70,615 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WY | $81,310 | $66,032 | $72,684 |
| LA | $80,190 | $63,224 | $71,565 |
| ND | $77,280 | $62,949 | $71,071 |
| SD | $76,400 | $62,577 | $71,034 |
| ID | $81,330 | $62,588 | $68,459 |
| AR | $73,320 | $58,156 | $67,227 |
| NM | $76,800 | $60,415 | $66,841 |
| AL | $77,000 | $59,720 | $66,378 |
| NE | $76,400 | $59,805 | $66,173 |
| DC | $99,400 | $73,277 | $66,132 |
| WI | $79,540 | $61,519 | $66,081 |
| CO | $84,820 | $65,477 | $64,585 |
| MT | $73,920 | $58,017 | $64,289 |
| UT | $78,850 | $60,792 | $63,990 |
| OK | $71,270 | $56,262 | $63,727 |
| AK | $79,260 | $64,589 | $63,500 |
| TN | $70,500 | $58,427 | $63,154 |
| KY | $71,980 | $57,066 | $63,079 |
| IA | $69,240 | $55,521 | $62,547 |
| NV | $73,030 | $60,207 | $62,081 |
| WV | $69,910 | $55,699 | $62,045 |
| MD | $83,290 | $63,832 | $61,397 |
| ME | $75,900 | $58,422 | $60,169 |
| VA | $77,380 | $59,578 | $59,135 |
| RI | $76,130 | $59,953 | $59,118 |
| WA | $78,450 | $64,020 | $58,971 |
| TX | $68,620 | $57,104 | $58,764 |
| KS | $67,200 | $52,644 | $58,516 |
| NH | $74,650 | $61,346 | $58,234 |
| VT | $70,130 | $55,648 | $57,586 |
| IN | $64,570 | $52,187 | $56,611 |
| GA | $69,240 | $54,684 | $56,551 |
| MN | $71,280 | $55,652 | $56,547 |
| OH | $63,160 | $51,909 | $56,538 |
| OR | $80,790 | $59,147 | $56,480 |
| MA | $78,740 | $60,607 | $55,994 |
| MO | $63,130 | $50,875 | $55,443 |
| CT | $73,860 | $57,478 | $55,433 |
| NY | $76,990 | $59,432 | $55,221 |
| NC | $64,460 | $51,910 | $55,142 |
| IL | $69,590 | $54,487 | $55,118 |
| CA | $79,810 | $61,646 | $54,757 |
| MS | $59,510 | $47,708 | $54,653 |
| AZ | $66,750 | $54,522 | $53,926 |
| MI | $63,500 | $50,754 | $53,888 |
| PA | $61,480 | $49,692 | $50,966 |
| DE | $63,850 | $50,500 | $50,880 |
| NJ | $64,020 | $51,631 | $47,419 |
| HI | $65,740 | $51,449 | $47,371 |
| SC | $52,310 | $43,059 | $46,212 |
| FL | $51,130 | $43,263 | $41,819 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for conservation scientists, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $73,010 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for conservation 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 the District of Columbia, at $73,277.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for conservation scientists. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Florida, on $41,819.
- All wage figures for conservation scientists are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $73,010. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for conservation 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 $73,277, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- Real-terms results for conservation scientists rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Florida anchors the distribution at $41,819. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.