Privacy-friendly analytics help us see which jobs people explore. They stay off unless you agree.Analytics off unless you agree. Details

Read the record
Back to the river
Skip to sources
Time Machine

Environmental scientists

Official title Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health (SOC 19-2041)

Also called Environmental analyst, Environmental health specialist, EHS specialist, Environmental protection specialist, Natural resources specialist

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 89,250 US environmental scientists, with median pay of $82,220 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 3,500 from 1900, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for environmental scientists: Remote sensing and real-time environmental monitoring networks, 2000 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 6.1% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

  • 72.6% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
  • 0.033 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013

Since the 2013 prediction

In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.033. BLS counted 87,380 of these jobs in May 2013 and 89,250 in May 2025. The count moved sharply in one step, May 2020 to May 2021, when BLS changed how it estimates these counts, so no change is derived here.

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Environmental scientists: jobs and pay since 1900 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-2041

Chicago

Future History. "Environmental scientists: jobs and pay since 1900." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-2041.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_19_2041, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Environmental scientists: jobs and pay since 1900}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-2041}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
187519001925195019752000now
2026
Known then as Sanitary Inspector / Public Health Inspector (sanitation reform era)
Known then as Sanitary Engineer / Public Health Scientist (post-war industrial hygiene era)
Known then as Environmental Scientist / Environmental Protection Specialist (EPA founding era)
Known then as Environmental Scientist / Environmental Health Specialist (cleanup and compliance era)
Known then as Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health (BLS SOC 19-2041)
Known today as Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health (BLS SOC 19-2041)
Projected to still be called Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health (BLS SOC 19-2041)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
89K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$82,220
Est.

≈ $80,112 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1866

New York State passes the Metropolitan Health Law, creating the first modern Board of Health in the United States. The law gave the board authority to declare and abate public health nuisances, order property cleanups, and conduct disease surveillance. Stephen Smith, whose 1865 report documented mortality rates by neighborhood, was the primary architect. The Board immediately hired a corps of sanitary inspectors who conducted systematic field investigations of tenements, stables, slaughterhouses, and sewers: the earliest professional environmental inspection workforce in American history.

Beat · 1948

The Donora, Pennsylvania smog event of October 1948 kills 20 people and sickens nearly half the town's 14,000 residents after a temperature inversion traps sulfur dioxide and metal particulates from U.S. Steel's zinc smelting plant. It is the first industrial air pollution disaster to prompt federal study and is widely credited as the catalyst for what would become the Clean Air Act. The Public Health Service's investigation of Donora marked the first systematic federal effort to connect industrial air emissions to specific health outcomes, pioneering the epidemiological methods that environmental health scientists would later use routinely.

Beat · 1962

Rachel Carson publishes "Silent Spring" on September 27, 1962, documenting the ecological effects of DDT and other organochlorine pesticides on bird populations, soil invertebrates, and water systems. The book drew on gas chromatography data and ecological field studies, making its case with chemistry rather than anecdote. It sold over 600,000 copies in its first year, prompted a congressional investigation, and ultimately led to the US ban on DDT in 1972. Silent Spring is the founding document of modern environmental science as a public-policy discipline: it demonstrated that a scientist's findings, clearly communicated, could redirect national policy.

Beat · 1969

On June 22, 1969, the Cuyahoga River in Cleveland catches fire for at least the thirteenth time in its recorded history, this time generating enough national media attention to become a symbol of industrial water pollution. Time magazine publishes photographs of the burning river (taken from a 1952 fire; no photographer captured the 1969 fire). The event, combined with a massive oil spill off Santa Barbara in January 1969 and growing air quality crises in Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and New York, crystallizes the political momentum for comprehensive federal environmental legislation. It demonstrates the limits of a regulatory system dependent on voluntary compliance and under-resourced local health departments.

Beat · 1970

President Nixon signs the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) on January 1, 1970, and signs the executive order creating the Environmental Protection Agency on December 2, 1970. NEPA requires Environmental Impact Statements for all major federal actions. The EPA consolidates pollution-control functions previously scattered across the Departments of Interior, Agriculture, and Health, Education, and Welfare. These two actions together create the regulatory architecture that requires environmental scientists at every level of government and in every regulated industry. The occupation is, for the first time, legally mandated.

Beat · 1980

Congress passes the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA, commonly called Superfund) on December 11, 1980, following the Love Canal disaster in Niagara Falls, New York, where residential neighborhoods built on a buried chemical waste dump had recorded elevated rates of cancer, birth defects, and miscarriage. Love Canal and Superfund created a permanent, federally mandated demand for environmental site characterization scientists that expanded private-sector consulting enormously. By the mid-1980s, firms such as IT Corporation, TRC, and EG&G were employing thousands of environmental scientists on site assessments and remediation projects.

Beat · 2015

The Paris Agreement is adopted on December 12, 2015, establishing a framework for voluntary national greenhouse gas reduction commitments. For environmental scientists, Paris represents a second legislative mandate moment analogous to the EPA founding: corporate GHG reporting, supply-chain emissions assessment, and climate risk disclosure became standard corporate practice rather than voluntary activities. The SEC's climate disclosure rules (finalized 2024), CDP reporting, and the EU's Corporate Sustainability Reporting rules accelerated demand for environmental scientists in the private sector, diversifying employment beyond the federal/state agency and consulting model that had dominated for 40 years.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace environmental scientists? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+6.1%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 19-2041 (Environmental scientists and specialists, including health): 93.4 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 99.2 thousand in 2035, a change of +5.7 thousand (+6.1%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers. The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
72.6%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 19-2041.00 Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health. Shown: human-rated β = 0.726, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.484 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.968; GPT-4-rated β 0.5. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Frey & Osborne (2013), "The Future of Employment"
2013 study · Probability of computerisation (2013 model)
3.3%
probability
What this measures

Published appendix value for SOC 2010 19-2041 Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health: probability of computerisation 0.033, rank 113 of 702 (rank 1 is least computerisable). Frey and Osborne estimated in 2013, with a Gaussian-process classifier on O*NET variables, how likely the whole occupation is to be technically automatable over "some unspecified number of years, perhaps a decade or two". It is a probability for the occupation, not a share of tasks and not a forecast of jobs lost.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for environmental scientists

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereScreen product and material inventories for PFAS, heavy metals, and other chemicals of concern using AI-powered ingredient indexing, then prioritize remediation or substitution actions by risk tier before regulatory deadlines.

Screen product and material inventories for PFAS, heavy metals, and other chemicals of concern using AI-powered ingredient indexing, then prioritize remediation or substitution actions by risk tier before regulatory deadlines.[5],[6]

Where your edge is

Validate AI risk-tier outputs against primary regulatory lists (EPA MCLs, REACH, state notification thresholds) and build internal expertise in interpreting HRMS mass spectrometry data that feeds these platforms.

AI is sitting alongside you hereTrack and report Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions using automated data pipelines that pull from facility monitoring systems and supplier invoices, then validate the AI-generated emissions calculations against GHG Protocol before submission to CDP, SEC, or state agencies.

Track and report Scope 1, 2, and 3 greenhouse gas emissions using automated data pipelines that pull from facility monitoring systems and supplier invoices, then validate the AI-generated emissions calculations against GHG Protocol before submission to CDP, SEC, or state agencies.[7],[8]

Where your edge is

Develop expertise in GHG Protocol accounting methodologies and emission factor selection so you can identify when automated platforms apply incorrect activity data or outdated IPCC emission factors.

AI is sitting alongside you hereConduct geospatial land-cover and change-detection analysis using satellite imagery, querying Google Earth Engine or ArcGIS with natural language to identify deforestation, wetland loss, or contamination plume migration since the last assessment.

Conduct geospatial land-cover and change-detection analysis using satellite imagery, querying Google Earth Engine or ArcGIS with natural language to identify deforestation, wetland loss, or contamination plume migration since the last assessment.[9],[10]

Where your edge is

Build proficiency in Python scripting within Earth Engine and ArcGIS Pro so you can customize analysis parameters beyond what natural-language interfaces expose, maintaining expert control over spatial modeling assumptions.

Where environmental scientists go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Natural Sciences Managers

Senior environmental scientists with multi-project experience and a track record of regulatory negotiation are well-positioned to manage scientific teams; the pivot captures higher pay and organizational influence as AI tools reduce the need for junior data-processing roles that scientists have historically supervised.

What you'd add
  • · Project management (PMP certification or equivalent)
  • · Budget planning and contract administration for field programs
  • · Team leadership and performance management
  • · Business development and proposal writing for consulting environments
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of environmental scientists changed since 1870?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Field collection + wet chemistry (Bunsen burner, gravimetric analysis)

    The sanitary inspector of the late 19th and early 20th centuries worked primarily with hand tools and classical wet chemistry: Petri dishes for bacteriological culture (after Koch demonstrated the technique in 1881), colorimetric reagents for testing water chlorine or iron content, and the Imhoff cone for measuring suspended solids. Laboratory analysis was slow, sample volumes were large, and detection limits were poor by modern standards. The professional's judgment about what to sample, where, and when mattered enormously because the instruments could only measure what the person brought to the lab.

  • Gas chromatography + atomic absorption spectrometry (post-war analytical chemistry)

    The commercialization of gas chromatography (1950s, following Archer Martin and Richard Synge's 1941 Nobel Prize work on partition chromatography) and atomic absorption spectrometry (Australian chemist Alan Walsh, 1953, commercial instruments from Perkin-Elmer and Varian by the early 1960s) fundamentally changed what an environmental scientist could measure and at what concentration. For the first time, trace organic contaminants and heavy metals could be detected in parts-per-million concentrations in water, air, and soil. These were the instruments that made Rachel Carson's 1962 analysis of DDT accumulation in ecosystems scientifically demonstrable rather than anecdotal. They created the empirical foundation for the entire regulatory edifice that followed: a standard could be set only once you could measure compliance.

  • EPA standard methods + mainframe environmental modeling (QUAL-II, AERMOD precursors)

    With the Clean Water Act (1972) and Clean Air Act Amendments (1970), the EPA established standardized analytical methods and reporting protocols that required every environmental scientist to document work in a uniform, defensible format. At the same time, the agency's early computing resources allowed development of numerical water quality models such as QUAL-II (stream eutrophication) and RECEBL precursors to modern air dispersion models. These models ran on mainframes at EPA regional offices and universities; consultants carried model inputs on punch cards or diskettes. The technology shifted the scientist's role from purely observational to predictive: permit decisions now rested on model outputs as well as measured data, and an environmental scientist who could run models had a distinct advantage.

  • PC-based GIS (ArcView 1992, MapInfo, AutoCAD Map) and spreadsheet data management

    The arrival of affordable PC-based GIS systems, especially ESRI's ArcView GIS (released 1992), transformed how environmental scientists organized and communicated spatial data. Site maps that had been drafted by hand or on dedicated CADD workstations moved to the desktop. Environmental impact assessment figures, contamination plume maps, and watershed boundaries became digital layers that could be queried and updated. Spreadsheet software (Lotus 1-2-3, then Excel) automated the statistical calculations that had previously been done on scientific calculators. The productivity gain was substantial: a site characterization that took a week of hand-drafting could be completed in hours. The PC era also produced early field data loggers and handheld instruments that could record measurements digitally, reducing transcription errors.

    Effect on the work

    PC-based GIS and spreadsheet tools roughly doubled analytical throughput per scientist in site assessment and impact assessment work, but employment continued to grow because regulatory demand was also expanding rapidly. The technology increased what a small team could accomplish, rather than reducing headcount.

  • Remote sensing and real-time environmental monitoring networks (USGS StreamStats, EPA AQS, MODIS)

    The 2000s saw continuous environmental monitoring transition from periodic sampling to real-time networked sensor arrays. The EPA Air Quality System (AQS) grew to thousands of ambient monitoring stations streaming data continuously. USGS StreamStats automated watershed delineation from digital elevation models. NASA's MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) satellites provided free global land-cover and surface-temperature data updated daily. For environmental scientists, this meant that a large fraction of the data previously collected by hand during site visits was now available through publicly accessible APIs. The professional's comparative advantage shifted toward interpreting continuous data streams and integrating multiple sensor sources, rather than collecting individual samples.

  • AI-assisted environmental analysis (Google Earth Engine AI, ClimateAi, SpheraCloud, PFAS AI tools)

    From roughly 2020, and accelerating sharply in 2023-2025, AI tools have entered the environmental scientist's workflow at multiple points: satellite imagery analysis (Google Earth Engine's AlphaEarth Foundations automates change detection and land-cover classification across petabytes of historical imagery), climate risk forecasting, GHG accounting (SpheraCloud applies 500,000+ proprietary emissions factors to automatically compute Scope 1/2/3 inventories), and chemical screening (EcoPulse PFAS AI assesses 500,000+ compounds against regulatory thresholds). AI handles the data-ingestion and pattern-recognition steps faster than human analysts, compressing what was multi-day work into minutes. The tasks that remain human-intensive are those requiring regulatory interpretation, community communication, legal accountability, and on-site judgment about conditions that sensors do not capture.

Part of Science · see all 27 roles →
Different role?

See the same long-arc view for your own profession.

Browse the directory by industry, or search by title or SOC code.

Browse all roles

Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health employment and pay by year

On record since1870
Latest US employment89,250 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$82,220 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+6.1% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 29 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
19003,500n/aEst., Duffy, John Researched contextReport
194012,000n/aEst., Fee, Elizabeth Researched contextReport
1970n/a$11,500Est., BLS Researched contextReport
197535,000n/aEst., EPA History Researched contextReport
199057,000$35,000BLS CPS 1990 (employment) Researched contextBLS CPS 1990 (pay) Researched contextReport
200054,860$44,180BLS OEWS 2000 Official statisticReport
200361,660$48,790BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statisticReport
200466,850$51,080BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
200572,000$52,630BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statisticReport
200677,720$56,100BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
200780,070$58,380BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statisticReport
200880,120$59,750BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statisticReport
200983,530$61,010BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statisticReport
201081,690$61,700BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201183,090$62,920BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201284,240$63,570BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201387,380$65,090BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201488,740$66,250BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201587,250$67,460BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201684,250$68,910BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201781,920$69,400BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
201880,480$71,130BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201984,290$71,360BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202084,610$73,230BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202176,890$76,530BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202277,270$76,480BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202380,730$78,980BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202484,930$80,060BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
202589,250$82,220BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
Embed this timeline on your site

Free for any site. Paste this where the timeline should appear; it stays interactive, every datapoint stays cited, and it sets no cookies on your page. How embedding works

<iframe src="https://futurehistory.earth/embed/19-2041"
  width="100%" height="430" style="border:0"
  title="Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health, a Future History timeline"
  loading="lazy"></iframe>
<p style="font-size:13px;margin:4px 0 0"><a href="https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/19-2041">Environmental Scientists and Specialists, Including Health: jobs and pay over time</a>, from Future History</p>

See all roles in Science