Meteorology Salary Information
Meteorologists, weather analysts and forecasters, whom the Bureau of Labor Statistics classify as atmospheric and space scientists, represent a small occupational category in the United States, with fewer than 9,000 people working in the field across the country. As of May 2009, they were paid an average annual salary of more than $85,000 nationwide, and the annual salaries of those working in three particular states exceeded $100,000.
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Average Wages
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Atmospheric and space scientists made an average or mean hourly wage of $40.94 as of May 2009, according to the bureau's occupational employment and wages survey. That worked out to approximately $85,160 on an annual basis. Average salaries are calculated by adding all the salaries of survey respondents and then dividing by the total number. Annual figures are derived by multiplying average hourly wages by 2,080, the number of hours a person would work in a year if employed full-time, not including overtime.
Median Wages
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The median wage for the group in May 2009, according to the bureau, was $40.73 per hour---roughly equivalent to an annual salary of $84,710. Fifty percent of all members of the group earned more than the median wage and the other 50 percent earned less.
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Percentile Wages
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The lowest-paid 10 percent of those scientists made an hourly wage of $19.50 or less in May 2009, or approximately $40,560 or less on an annual basis. For the highest-paid 10 percent, hourly wages were $61.18 or higher, representing annual salaries of at least $127,250.
Top Employers
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Of the 8,320 people employed as atmospheric and space scientists in the United States in May 2009, more than a third---2,960---of them were employed by the federal government's executive branch, which paid an average wage of $45.30 per hour, or approximately $94,210 per year. The second-largest employment sector was other professional, scientific and technical services, which employed 1,430 of the scientists at an average annual salary of $63,200. Colleges, universities and professional schools were the third-largest source of employment for the group, with 1,120 paid an average annual salary of $80,870. Those were the only industries that employed more than 1,000 of the scientists.
Top-Paying Areas
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The District of Columbia was the highest-paying area in the United States for atmospheric and space scientists, with an average hourly wage of $54.84, or approximately $114,070 per year. Maryland ranked second, with the scientists earning an average of $52.66 per hour, or roughly $109,530. Third-place New Jersey was the only other area with an average annual wage of more than $100,000, with the scientists earning an average of approximately $107,060 per year, or $51.47 per hour.
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References
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