Date updated: 2012-08-07
Data Brief 2012-007
Written and compiled by Leila Gonzales for AGI, August 2012

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Median salaries for non-technician, geoscience-related occupations outpaced broad occupational category salaries in 2011. Salaries for geoscience-related management occupations were 24-32% higher than salaries for all management occupations, while geoscience-related engineering occupations outpaced salaries for all architecture and engineering occupations by 10-70%. Geoscience-related scientific disciplines outpaced salaries for all Life, Physical, and Social Science salaries by 6% (Environmental Scientists) to 51% (Atmospheric and Space Scientists). In addition, geoscience-related postsecondary teacher salaries outpaced Education, Training and Library occupations by 49-97%. Although the majority of median salaries for geoscience-related occupations decreased by less than 3% between 2010-2011, over the past five-years (2007-2011), the majority of median salaries of geoscience-related occupations increased between 1-9%, with Petroleum Engineering salaries seeing the largest growth over the period, and Environmental Engineering salaries seeing the smallest growth.

*The 2011 median salaries for geoscience-related occupations are on average 7% (+/- 4%) lower than the corresponding mean salary. We use median salaries because salary data are often asymmetrically distributed, and thus the median values give better estimates of centrality or a "typical" salary of an occupation.