Life, Physical, and Social Science Technicians, All Other
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Oklahoma pays this job best, at $86,260. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $74,907 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for life, physical, and social science technicians, all other is also the real leader: Oklahoma at $86,260, holding through tax and through price deflation to $74,907. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$62,280
People doing it
73,910
Highest paid
$86,260
OK
Best off, really
$74,907
OK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$39,000
Highest tenth
$102,690
Lowest, really
$37,412
HI
States with data
50
National average
$66,280
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.29%
OK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $37,412 and $74,907. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- This is a small job: about 73,910 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 $62,280 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Oklahoma tops the ones that are.
- Wages for life, physical, and social science technicians, all other cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $37,412 to $74,907. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 73,910 workers, life, physical, and social science technicians, all other 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 life, physical, and social science technicians, all other. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Life, Physical, and Social Science Technicians, All Other
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $39,000 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,280 |
| Top tenth earn over | $102,690 |
| This salary | $62,280 |
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 Life, Physical, and Social Science Technicians, All Other
The national median for this job
$62,280around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $39,000 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,280 |
| Top tenth | $102,690 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Life, Physical, and Social Science Technicians, All Other, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Wisconsin · $47,210 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Oklahoma · $86,260 |
| Spread | $39,050 |
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 | $48,960 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $50,383 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| OK | $86,260 | $66,133 | $74,907 |
| ND | $69,350 | $57,525 | $64,947 |
| KY | $68,230 | $54,559 | $60,308 |
| WY | $64,510 | $54,014 | $59,455 |
| AK | $70,700 | $58,567 | $57,580 |
| KS | $65,270 | $51,271 | $56,990 |
| GA | $69,320 | $54,736 | $56,605 |
| TN | $62,050 | $52,037 | $56,247 |
| WA | $73,530 | $60,558 | $55,782 |
| AR | $59,310 | $48,100 | $55,601 |
| DC | $79,230 | $60,802 | $54,874 |
| RI | $69,630 | $55,624 | $54,849 |
| MS | $59,490 | $47,693 | $54,636 |
| ME | $66,730 | $52,590 | $54,163 |
| CA | $78,350 | $60,754 | $53,964 |
| WV | $59,750 | $48,334 | $53,840 |
| VT | $63,460 | $51,092 | $52,871 |
| AL | $59,500 | $47,426 | $52,713 |
| VA | $67,240 | $53,028 | $52,633 |
| MD | $68,390 | $54,057 | $51,996 |
| SC | $58,960 | $47,961 | $51,473 |
| FL | $63,180 | $52,945 | $51,178 |
| NH | $64,250 | $53,805 | $51,075 |
| CT | $66,710 | $52,841 | $50,961 |
| NM | $56,420 | $46,027 | $50,923 |
| CO | $63,760 | $51,314 | $50,615 |
| MI | $59,100 | $47,406 | $50,333 |
| UT | $59,290 | $47,181 | $49,663 |
| LA | $53,360 | $43,840 | $49,624 |
| SD | $51,630 | $43,665 | $49,565 |
| PA | $57,680 | $46,755 | $47,954 |
| IL | $59,410 | $47,120 | $47,666 |
| AZ | $58,240 | $47,922 | $47,399 |
| MT | $52,260 | $42,471 | $47,063 |
| NV | $54,070 | $45,625 | $47,046 |
| NY | $63,810 | $50,603 | $47,017 |
| MA | $63,820 | $50,588 | $46,738 |
| IA | $50,480 | $41,434 | $46,678 |
| MO | $50,410 | $41,252 | $44,956 |
| ID | $50,600 | $41,009 | $44,855 |
| OH | $49,210 | $41,083 | $44,747 |
| OR | $60,810 | $46,270 | $44,184 |
| NE | $48,640 | $39,753 | $43,986 |
| IN | $48,650 | $39,865 | $43,245 |
| NC | $49,200 | $40,258 | $42,764 |
| TX | $48,960 | $41,519 | $42,726 |
| NJ | $55,980 | $45,615 | $41,893 |
| WI | $47,210 | $38,639 | $41,504 |
| MN | $49,410 | $40,044 | $40,689 |
| HI | $50,880 | $40,632 | $37,412 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $62,280, 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 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 Oklahoma, at $66,133.
- 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 — Hawaii anchors the bottom at $37,412. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for life, physical, and social science technicians, all other, with a national value of $62,280. 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 life, physical, and social science technicians, all other 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 $66,133, which leads in Oklahoma.
- Real-terms figures for life, physical, and social science technicians, all other 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.