Geoscientists, Except Hydrologists and Geographers
What the pay figures show
- Texas comes first for this job on every measure. $145,220 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $113,737 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers, Texas's $145,220 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $113,737. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$101,920
People doing it
23,470
Highest paid
$145,220
TX
Best off, really
$113,737
TX, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$59,330
Highest tenth
$200,230
Lowest, really
$47,445
CT
States with data
50
National average
$116,150
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
97.17%
TX, 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 $47,445 to $113,737.
- This is a small job: about 23,470 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $101,920 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Texas tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation in geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers 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 $47,445 to $113,737, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 23,470 workers, geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers 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.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Geoscientists, Except Hydrologists and Geographers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $59,330 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $101,920 |
| Top tenth earn over | $200,230 |
| This salary | $101,920 |
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 Geoscientists, Except Hydrologists and Geographers
The national median for this job
$101,920around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $59,330 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $101,920 |
| Top tenth | $200,230 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Geoscientists, Except Hydrologists and Geographers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Connecticut · $61,810 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Texas · $145,220 |
| Spread | $83,410 |
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 | $145,220 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $149,442 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| TX | $145,220 | $110,524 | $113,737 |
| OK | $119,990 | $88,344 | $100,066 |
| MS | $112,400 | $83,499 | $95,655 |
| RI | $121,010 | $89,565 | $88,318 |
| CO | $114,410 | $84,992 | $83,833 |
| AK | $107,410 | $84,393 | $82,970 |
| NV | $99,890 | $79,103 | $81,566 |
| LA | $91,560 | $70,882 | $80,233 |
| MD | $110,510 | $81,598 | $78,486 |
| NC | $95,260 | $72,553 | $77,070 |
| ND | $84,070 | $67,593 | $76,314 |
| WA | $105,020 | $82,712 | $76,188 |
| NH | $101,150 | $79,989 | $75,931 |
| ID | $91,170 | $68,989 | $75,460 |
| NM | $88,530 | $68,104 | $75,348 |
| AL | $88,610 | $67,435 | $74,953 |
| MA | $108,210 | $79,865 | $73,787 |
| FL | $95,140 | $75,761 | $73,233 |
| IL | $96,950 | $72,380 | $73,218 |
| NE | $85,550 | $65,825 | $72,835 |
| UT | $89,990 | $68,133 | $71,718 |
| HI | $106,270 | $76,958 | $70,857 |
| SC | $86,070 | $65,989 | $70,821 |
| MO | $83,390 | $64,513 | $70,305 |
| DE | $93,640 | $69,757 | $70,282 |
| OH | $81,220 | $64,451 | $70,199 |
| CA | $106,500 | $77,940 | $69,230 |
| VT | $87,070 | $66,448 | $68,761 |
| TN | $77,870 | $63,612 | $68,758 |
| KS | $80,080 | $60,986 | $67,789 |
| WY | $74,910 | $61,529 | $67,728 |
| ME | $86,840 | $65,355 | $67,309 |
| KY | $77,510 | $60,763 | $67,165 |
| PA | $84,180 | $65,466 | $67,145 |
| SD | $71,150 | $58,884 | $66,842 |
| OR | $98,110 | $69,816 | $66,669 |
| WV | $76,060 | $59,744 | $66,551 |
| MI | $80,990 | $62,615 | $66,482 |
| IA | $74,460 | $58,995 | $66,460 |
| AZ | $85,190 | $67,034 | $66,301 |
| VA | $88,390 | $66,691 | $66,195 |
| WI | $78,610 | $60,920 | $65,437 |
| MT | $75,520 | $59,052 | $65,436 |
| AR | $67,880 | $54,531 | $63,035 |
| MN | $80,540 | $61,537 | $62,526 |
| NJ | $88,500 | $67,642 | $62,124 |
| NY | $86,410 | $65,550 | $60,906 |
| GA | $73,920 | $57,743 | $59,714 |
| IN | $68,240 | $54,853 | $59,504 |
| CT | $61,810 | $49,195 | $47,445 |
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 $101,920 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 this job, 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 Texas, at $110,524.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Connecticut anchors the bottom at $47,445. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $101,920. 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 geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers 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 $110,524, which leads in Texas.
- Real-terms figures for geoscientists, except hydrologists and geographers deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.