What Is The Average Forestry Job Salary?

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.