What a chemical engineer earns, by metro

Pay for chemical engineers is unusually consistent across the country: $66,230 at the bottom of the range, $163,380 at the top, a spread of only 2.47×. Where you work matters less for this role than it does for most — which usually points to pay being set by structure (scales, licensure, collective agreements) rather than local bidding.

What the percentile band tells you

Ten per cent of chemical engineers earn below $79,420 and ten per cent above $182,880 — a 2.3× band. The upside from median to 90th percentile is 46%, which is a normal amount of room for experience and specialisation to matter. An offer below the 25th percentile is worth questioning; one above the 75th is worth taking seriously.

Geography barely moves this one

Albuquerque (NM) leads and Lansing-East Lansing (MI) trails, but the gap is modest. For a role like this the more useful comparison is not between cities but between the 10th and 90th percentile within one — see the band above.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

Kennewick-Richland is the cluster

Kennewick-Richland has 18.03× the national concentration of chemical engineers — the densest market in the country for this role, with 320 employed locally. Pay there is $130,030, which does not put it near the top of the pay table. Concentration and compensation are different things — a dense market is easier to get hired in and easier to move around within, but the competition that makes it dense also caps what employers need to offer.

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 17-2041. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 81 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 447 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.