Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for this job is California, at $136,990. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and Tennessee comes out ahead, worth $87,654. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for medical scientists, except epidemiologists: California leads at $136,990 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting Tennessee to $87,654 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
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
$103,410
People doing it
172,340
Highest paid
$136,990
CA
Best off, really
$87,654
TN, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$64,800
Highest tenth
$177,780
Lowest, really
$49,869
MS
States with data
46
National average
$116,840
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
92.52%
TN, 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 $49,869 to $87,654.
- About 172,340 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $103,410. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 46 jurisdictions, averaging $103,410 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. California leads the published set.
- Interstate variation in medical scientists, except epidemiologists 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 $49,869 to $87,654, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 172,340 workers, medical scientists, except epidemiologists sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- Coverage for medical scientists, except epidemiologists runs to 46 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: Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $64,800 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $103,410 |
| Top tenth earn over | $177,780 |
| This salary | $103,410 |
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 Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists
The national median for this job
$103,410around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $64,800 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $103,410 |
| Top tenth | $177,780 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Medical Scientists, Except Epidemiologists, state by state
The national median for this job
46states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $54,040 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $136,990 |
| Spread | $82,950 |
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 | $80,470 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $82,809 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| TN | $102,720 | $81,094 | $87,654 |
| AZ | $116,820 | $88,495 | $87,528 |
| NJ | $129,280 | $93,584 | $85,949 |
| MA | $128,210 | $92,807 | $85,743 |
| CA | $136,990 | $96,251 | $85,495 |
| MT | $101,950 | $76,153 | $84,385 |
| MO | $102,540 | $77,085 | $84,005 |
| NC | $102,980 | $77,676 | $82,512 |
| CT | $116,990 | $85,363 | $82,326 |
| AK | $104,930 | $82,648 | $81,255 |
| NV | $98,560 | $78,167 | $80,601 |
| PA | $99,190 | $75,565 | $77,503 |
| RI | $103,370 | $77,993 | $76,907 |
| WA | $105,680 | $83,176 | $76,616 |
| MD | $106,000 | $78,651 | $75,651 |
| NH | $100,650 | $79,637 | $75,597 |
| SD | $80,890 | $65,736 | $74,620 |
| DE | $100,190 | $73,932 | $74,489 |
| OR | $111,030 | $77,775 | $74,268 |
| IA | $83,850 | $65,244 | $73,500 |
| FL | $94,940 | $75,620 | $73,097 |
| GA | $92,450 | $69,854 | $72,239 |
| OH | $83,910 | $66,270 | $72,180 |
| ME | $93,730 | $69,710 | $71,794 |
| WV | $82,690 | $64,104 | $71,408 |
| KS | $84,490 | $63,843 | $70,964 |
| ID | $83,010 | $63,681 | $69,654 |
| VA | $93,620 | $70,069 | $69,548 |
| NE | $80,970 | $62,812 | $69,501 |
| IN | $81,110 | $63,528 | $68,914 |
| MI | $84,310 | $64,810 | $68,812 |
| MN | $89,950 | $67,517 | $68,603 |
| WI | $82,530 | $63,445 | $68,150 |
| OK | $76,480 | $59,693 | $67,613 |
| DC | $101,940 | $74,848 | $67,550 |
| TX | $80,470 | $65,441 | $67,343 |
| KY | $77,580 | $60,810 | $67,217 |
| UT | $82,940 | $63,487 | $66,827 |
| AR | $72,530 | $57,630 | $66,618 |
| IL | $82,330 | $62,819 | $63,546 |
| NY | $87,760 | $66,427 | $61,720 |
| ND | $64,470 | $53,982 | $60,947 |
| AL | $68,490 | $54,065 | $60,092 |
| NM | $67,100 | $54,047 | $59,796 |
| VT | $66,500 | $53,334 | $55,191 |
| MS | $54,040 | $43,532 | $49,869 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $103,410, 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.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In California, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $96,251.
- Levelling out prices for this job 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 — Mississippi sits at the bottom on $49,869.
- These are distribution medians for medical scientists, except epidemiologists, with a national value of $103,410. 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.
- Take-home calculations for medical scientists, except epidemiologists assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $96,251, in California. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to medical scientists, except epidemiologists 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 Mississippi at $49,869. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $49,869 — and the two source series are dated independently.