Video Transcript

Host Question:
What would be the highest paying fields or maybe types of places to work at with an environmental degree?

Guest Answer:
Industrial sector is going to be your highest paid position. They pay out the most. Consulting is somehow both the lowest and somehow above the highest end. It just depends. If you work for an engineering firm and consulting, that’s probably going to be your highest paid. Even though engineers typically are consultants themselves. They tend to pay a lot higher wage. You can take the boards for that. They kind of pull on bigger contracts and bigger money, like your smaller environmental firms. It’s going to be the lowest end of the spectrum in the highest end, just depending on where you fit in.

Guest Answer:
So making sure that you have that page is key when you look at the industry as a whole. Most employees aren’t looking for a PhD or a master’s degree, and within that, you’re going to do a lot of research. They’re wanting to know the implementation and how to best conserve and how to reduce the forest carbon model and how to best help that. So making sure that you have the highest degree is very important.

Guest Answer:
Disregarding the federal government because depending on what grade level you get hired at, you’re pretty much capped at that until you move up another grade level. So regarding private industry, I would say the area where you’re going to probably get paid the most is probably environmental compliance type of things, where you are hired as a consultant or an outsider for a company that wants to make sure that they’re following NEPA or certain laws that have been put in place either by the government or by the state. I know California has a lot of environmental compliance laws. I know when you get into the law policy side of things, you’re oftentimes working for like non-profits or big institute that can be very high paying. But then again, you’re not really field going at that point. You’re pretty much the people making the decisions about what has to be followed. So I would say private consulting / environmental compliance, inspecting and the law and policy type of things is going to be highest paying as well as perhaps manufacturing the timber companies that not necessarily the ones that are like harvesting. But when you turn into what are you going to do with the products? Then the people that are working high up in those companies, obviously that can be very lucrative.

Guest Answer:
It would be in private industry, you know, whether in environmental consulting job or getting more specific into forestry or working as a Forester for a forestry consulting group, for a timber and/or real estate owner like warehouses are some great big timber producers or working at the forest or for a mill that buy timber sales from either private citizens or public timber sales like the Forest Service puts out, have their own foresters to size up the timber that’s available and see what’s worth bidding on and how much they’re going to bid on it.

Guest Answer:
So I would say the highest paying fields the ones that with better with like research related, the highest paying like employer would be possibly like if you worked for like a government agency, but there are like private companies that do environmental work that will pay you very low.

Video Transcript

Host Question:
In your experience, what range of compensation to someone with an environmental management degree stand to make? Maybe, where the entry level jobs would be at the top of the range, and where the highest end of the range that you would know about?

Guest Answer:
Some states pay better than others. Midwest tend to pay the lower end compared to the East Coast or far West Coast from the Midwest. You’re looking at low end $30,000 to $45,000. That’s usually a salary or not an hourly mid-level. You’re looking at between $40k and $50k to $55k. That’s kind of like your mid-level of experience acquired. I’ve seen as low as $45,000. It just depends on the company and depends on the position. But I’ve seen as high as $140,000. Typically the higher wages you’ll see are going to be working for industrial sector. The wage is really dependent on how you can leverage your experience, how you can leverage your abilities.

Guest Answer:
Definitely I would say entry level, if you maybe don’t necessarily have a college degree or a lower degree, you probably be making around $35,000 somewhere in the $30’s range. While if you have a higher degree gone through college, you can get up to $100,000 and over easily.

Guest Answer:
Like anything else. If you’re really, really good at your job, you could make quite a bit doing it regardless of the field that you’re in. And because environmental studies is such a broad field, there’s a pretty wide range of salaries that you can expect. I’d say probably on the lower end for entry level folks you might be looking at or somewhere around $40,000 a year. But I mean, that can go well past six figures depending on the field you’re in. If you’re an environmental consultant, for instance, even entry level, you could be making $80 or $90,000 a year. And as you obviously get more seniority, more experience.

Guest Answer:
Where you start around could be as low as $28,000 a year. You could work up to a median of $40,000. If you are in a lot of research and have that PhD and a lot of experience, you might be $90,000. So there’s quite a big range.

Guest Answer:
So I would say most people either if they just come into the field with a diploma, high school diploma because you can, or a college degree, but maybe not a relevant one, but they’re just working as a technician, maybe about $30,000 a year, $25,000 to $30,000. And experience matters in the school almost as much as education. Obviously, the people that have the master’s and even the PhDs and more are going to be in that University or like teaching side, or whether they’re at a University doing research, because a lot of the big western universities run huge research labs or teaching. So I’m not really aware of the education side, but if you are working more just in the field or for the government or a consulting agency, I would say maybe get up to $70 to $90,000 a year. Like I said, it’s unique in fire because you get a ton of overtime in the summer go and fires. I personally work about as much as in about six months. I work as many hours about as people do in a typical work year. So that can really affect your pay. But I would say from like general middle to entry to mid-level would be about $25 to $35,000. And then like mid-level depending on what you’re doing, if you’re consulting for a really good like a really well-known agency, I could probably even start maybe like $60 or $70,000. And the people that are really high up making the decisions probably higher to like $90, maybe even over 100,000.

Guest Answer:
With just a bachelor’s degree, I’d say across the board. And the US average is probably going to be about $65,000 to $70,000. But that just really depends on the state. For example, the USDA has a job listing right now for an environmental economist. I was actually looking at last week that their salary grade for only a bachelor’s with a bachelor’s experience or a bachelor’s in a master’s was ranging from $110,000 to $180,000 a year.