Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is Washington, at $67,160. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and Nebraska comes out ahead, worth $58,747. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for environmental science and protection technicians, including health: Washington leads at $67,160 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting Nebraska to $58,747 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$55,090
People doing it
34,670
Highest paid
$67,160
WA
Best off, really
$58,747
NE, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,170
Highest tenth
$94,160
Lowest, really
$33,224
MS
States with data
49
National average
$60,800
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.38%
NE, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $33,224 to $58,747.
- This is a small job: about 34,670 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 49 jurisdictions, averaging $55,090 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Washington leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in environmental science and protection technicians, including health is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $33,224 to $58,747 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- With 34,670 workers, environmental science and protection technicians, including health 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.
- Coverage for environmental science and protection technicians, including health runs to 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,170 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $55,090 |
| Top tenth earn over | $94,160 |
| This salary | $55,090 |
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 Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health
The national median for this job
$55,090around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,170 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $55,090 |
| Top tenth | $94,160 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Environmental Science and Protection Technicians, Including Health, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $35,010 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $67,160 |
| Spread | $32,150 |
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 | $50,710 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $52,184 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NE | $66,240 | $53,093 | $58,747 |
| ND | $61,430 | $51,539 | $58,189 |
| NM | $62,330 | $50,498 | $55,870 |
| MT | $60,550 | $48,743 | $54,012 |
| MN | $65,320 | $51,746 | $52,579 |
| NV | $60,370 | $50,687 | $52,266 |
| TN | $56,960 | $47,947 | $51,827 |
| WA | $67,160 | $56,077 | $51,654 |
| RI | $64,830 | $52,260 | $51,532 |
| CT | $66,120 | $52,421 | $50,556 |
| OH | $56,070 | $46,407 | $50,545 |
| PA | $60,650 | $49,050 | $50,308 |
| UT | $58,240 | $46,384 | $48,824 |
| ID | $55,420 | $44,626 | $48,812 |
| CO | $60,930 | $49,165 | $48,495 |
| IL | $59,930 | $47,512 | $48,062 |
| WI | $55,290 | $44,733 | $48,050 |
| IA | $52,020 | $42,613 | $48,006 |
| WV | $52,590 | $42,883 | $47,768 |
| AZ | $57,800 | $47,580 | $47,060 |
| VT | $55,090 | $44,856 | $46,418 |
| WY | $49,440 | $41,905 | $46,127 |
| NY | $62,400 | $49,546 | $46,035 |
| AR | $48,390 | $39,730 | $45,926 |
| AK | $55,220 | $46,549 | $45,764 |
| MO | $50,340 | $41,200 | $44,898 |
| NC | $51,630 | $42,113 | $44,735 |
| OK | $48,090 | $39,157 | $44,352 |
| TX | $50,710 | $42,925 | $44,173 |
| MI | $51,290 | $41,462 | $44,023 |
| CA | $61,220 | $49,505 | $43,972 |
| MA | $59,330 | $47,205 | $43,612 |
| IN | $49,020 | $40,151 | $43,555 |
| SC | $48,700 | $40,397 | $43,355 |
| NH | $54,080 | $45,633 | $43,318 |
| OR | $58,950 | $44,938 | $42,912 |
| ME | $51,820 | $41,640 | $42,885 |
| SD | $44,180 | $37,679 | $42,770 |
| KS | $47,880 | $38,268 | $42,537 |
| MD | $55,090 | $44,192 | $42,506 |
| KY | $46,840 | $38,294 | $42,329 |
| HI | $57,010 | $45,098 | $41,523 |
| AL | $45,000 | $36,414 | $40,473 |
| GA | $48,050 | $38,989 | $40,320 |
| FL | $48,840 | $41,423 | $40,041 |
| VA | $49,430 | $39,815 | $39,519 |
| NJ | $52,190 | $42,779 | $39,289 |
| DE | $45,720 | $36,945 | $37,223 |
| MS | $35,010 | $29,002 | $33,224 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $55,090 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Washington keeps the most at $56,077.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 Mississippi, on $33,224.
- All wage figures for environmental science and protection technicians, including health are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $55,090. 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.
- The household modeled for environmental science and protection technicians, including health is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Washington retains the most, $56,077. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms results for environmental science and protection technicians, including health 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; Mississippi anchors the distribution at $33,224. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.