Geoscience Salaries Remain Robust in 2020

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Date updated: 2021-08-27
Data Brief 2021-022
Written and compiled by Leila Gonzales and Christopher Keane, AGI

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Overall geoscience-related salaries increased by 2% between 2019 and 2020, which was in line with other science and engineering occupations. The greatest increases in median salaries within the geosciences were geoscience natural sci­ence managers (7% increase) and soil and plant scientists, atmospheric and space scientists, and geographers (each with a 5% increase). Median salaries for geologic and petroleum technicians declined by 1% while median salaries for petroleum engineers remained unchanged between 2019 and 2020.

Salaries for geoscience-related occupations (darker colors in the figure below) generally were higher than salaries for broad occupational categories (lighter colors in the figure below). The only geoscience occupations with lower median salaries than broad occupational categories were cartographers and photogrammetrists, geoscience civil engineering technicians, environmental engineering technicians, surveying and mapping technicians, environmental science technicians, soil and plant scientists, and conservation scientists.

DB_2021-022 chart 01: Median Annual Salaries of Geoscience Occupations, 2020 (Credit: AGI; data derived from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment Statistics)

Note: Broad occupational categories are shown in lighter colors and geoscience-related occupations are shown in darker colors.

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