Income Percentiles by Occupation and Education Level

Biological Scientists

Total Income to Compare: $

Income Percentile Results

Total Income of $55,000 ranks between the 28.3th and 41th percentiles for all education levels. These results were estimated off of 89,576 Biological Scientists.

50th Percentile (Median) Income for any Education Level: $73,881
75th Percentile: $105,602
95th Percentile: $182,600
99th Percentile: $336,099

See Similar Occupations

Income Percentile Stats

  • To be in the top 1% for this age range, your household would need an income of $336,099 per year. This would include salary, investments, and any business income.
  • To be in the top 5% for this age range, your household would need an income of $182,600 per year. This would include salary, investments, and any business income.

Income of Biological Scientists by Highest Education Level

Total Income of $55,000 ranks for education levels:
  • Compared to Doctoral degree holders this ranks between the 13.1th and 22.3th percentiles.
  • Compared to Professional degree beyond a Bachelor's degree holders this ranks between the 21.7th and 34.3th percentiles.
  • Compared to Master's degree holders this ranks between the 20.9th and 33.4th percentiles.
  • Compared to Bachelor's degree holders this ranks between the 38.6th and 52.9th percentiles.
  • Compared to HS Diploma / GED degree holders this ranks between the NANth and NANth percentiles.

Income Percentile Distribution by Education Level

Highest Level of Education for Biological Scientists:
  • Other (N/A or Less than HS): 0%
  • HS Diploma / GED: 0%
  • Associates Degree and Some College: 0%
  • Bachelors Degree: 49.6%
  • Masters Degree: 28.9%
  • Professional Degree beyond a Bachelors: 2.8%
  • Doctoral Degree (PHd) : 18.7%

Most Common Bachelors Degree Majors

  • For Biology and Life Sciences undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 38.5th and 53.6th percentiles.
  • For Environment and Natural Resources undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 43.6th and 55.6th percentiles.
  • For Physical Sciences undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 40.7th and 57.1th percentiles.
  • For Business undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 27.8th and 46.4th percentiles.
  • For Medical and Health Sciences and Services undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 39.7th and 49th percentiles.
  • For Agriculture undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 40.7th and 50.6th percentiles.
  • For Social Sciences undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 28.4th and 42.8th percentiles.
  • For Engineering undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 58.2th and 65.2th percentiles.
  • For Education Administration and Teaching undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 34.9th and 57.5th percentiles.
  • For Psychology undergraduate majors this income ranks between the 40.9th and 50.1th percentiles.
Note: The source data only records undergraduate degree majors, even if a person continues to study.

Treemap of Undergraduate Majors

Methodology and Assumptions

This data was sourced from the person-level data recorded by the American Communities Survey. The version of the survey used was the most recent 5 year revision for data recorded from 2017-2022. These results represent 89,576 Biological Scientists. The occupation code that was used to generate these results e was 1610 to read more about the occupation codes that the ACS and Census use. These results were generated in R using raw data from the ACS and precalculated in a batch. This data includes all individual income for the survey respondent, so some of the people may have a wage job as well as other income sources. I did not limit to wage income, because many occupations have high portions of entrepreneurs (CEOs, doctors, tradespeople).

Exclusions and Filters Applied:
  • Filtered for people who reported working at least 30 hours a week.
  • High School Graduates and GED graduates were original 2 separate categories that I combined.
  • Anything below High School Graduates is combined into a separate category. I did not include these on the page for space reason but I can.
  • The data has data for associate degree holders and some college and these values are mostly in between the high school and bachelors samples. There doesn't seem to be a significant difference between some college and an associates degree.
  • All ages are included and not separated. I did some initial testing and there is a difference if the data is split out by age, but I wasn't able to consolidate the data into a way that would make it fast to interact with and avoid being too complicated.
  • There may be some confusion around a masters degree vs a professional degree beyond a masters. This was a distinction made in the original raw data that I decided to keep. Because the data is collected by polling people individually, some of the respondents may have mixed up the difference depending on how they phrased their response.
    • Masters Degree : MBA, Masters in Something
    • Professional Degree beyond a Bachelors Degree: Law Degree, Medical School, generally these degrees are credentials for specific careers.
    • Doctoral Degree: PHd