Physicists
Salary benchmarks based on 84 public records across 5 cities.
What do Physicists do?
Conduct research into physical phenomena, develop theories on the basis of observation and experiments, and devise methods to apply physical laws and theories. Excludes “Biochemists and Biophysicists” (19-1021).
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, SOC 2018 (SOC 19-2012)
What our data shows for Physicists
RoleHue publishes 84 salary records for Physicists, across 5 cities. Weighted by how many records each city contributes, the band runs from $86,720 at the 25th percentile to $132,314 at the 75th, a spread of $45,594 around $94,221. Each of those three figures averages the city-level percentiles rather than ranking the pooled records, and weights each city by how many records it holds, so the cities we hold most data for pull them hardest. Measured against that $94,221 figure rather than in dollars (48% of it), that spread is wider than 83% of the roles we cover, so a single figure summarises this title worse than it does most others.
Oak Ridge, TN carries the highest median we hold for the role at $130,008; College Park, MD the lowest at $67,018, a gap of $62,990. The middle half of those city medians, weighted by how many records each city contributes, spans $20,514, narrower than the $45,594 band within cities: for Physicists, where a record sits within its own metro separates our numbers more than which metro it came from.
No single metro carries most of this: the largest share is Batavia, IL, with 29 of the 84 records we publish for this role (35%). Evidence clears 25 records in 1 of the 5 cities; for the rest, the city median we show rests on fewer records than that.
Salary Overview
Weighted average across all cities with available data. Based on 84 data points.
$87K
P25
$94K
P50
$132K
P75
Top Paying Cities
Related Roles
Help map the full range
Help make Physicists salary data more accurate. Contribute anonymously.
Add my salarySource: U.S. Department of Labor disclosure filings for Physicists roles, plus anonymous submissions.
Benchmarks last recalculated: 2026-07-31. That is when we recomputed the statistics · the underlying filings are older. See methodology for how current the data is.