Nuclear Engineers Salary - BLS OEWS Wage Benchmarks
SOC 17-2161 · National · May 2025 OEWS Data
Is this a competitive Nuclear Engineers salary in 2026?
Based on BLS OEWS wage percentiles, JOLTS August 2026 demand signals, and ECI Q2 2026 wage growth.
How Nuclear Engineers pay is moving in 2026
Trend, demand, and spread context from BLS OEWS, JOLTS, and ECI
Median pay for this role rose 5.1% between the May 2024 and May 2025 BLS surveys, outpacing the 2.5% wage growth of Professional & Business Services (BLS ECI).
Professional & Business Services is running a 5.0% job-openings rate with quits at 2.1% (BLS JOLTS). The openings rate has drifted down from 5.8% to 5.0% over the past quarter.
Top earners (P90) make about 2.1 times what entry-level (P10) workers make in this role. That spread is in the typical range for U.S. occupations; standard 80% to 120% pay bands around the median work well.
- Sep 29, 2026JOLTS August 2026: sector openings eased to 5.0% (down 119K). BLS revised July up from 4.8% to 5.5%, so last month's third straight decline did not happen. Quits recovered to 2.1%; layoffs fell 56K.
- Sep 1, 2026JOLTS July 2026: sector openings fell for a third month to 4.8% (June revised to 5.1%), and hires dropped 188K, the largest pullback of any sector. Quits slid to 1.8%.
- Aug 4, 2026JOLTS June 2026: sector openings eased to 5.5% (down 0.3pp), still the highest of any major sector. Quits held at 2.2%.
Commentary is generated from published BLS figures (OEWS May 2025 vs May 2024, JOLTS August 2026, ECI Q2 2026) and refreshed each release. It is interpretation, not a BLS product.
The national median salary for Nuclear Engineers is $133,973 per year ($64.41/hr) according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025. The middle 50% of earners make between $108,701 and $163,634 annually. Top earners at the 90th percentile reach $196,290 per year. There are approximately 15,280 nuclear engineers employed in the United States.
About This Role
Conduct research on nuclear engineering projects or apply principles and theory of nuclear science to problems concerned with release, control, and use of nuclear energy and nuclear waste disposal.
Career Outlook
About This Data
Wage figures on this page come from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey, May 2025 release. OEWS surveys roughly 1.1 million establishments annually. It is the most comprehensive employer-reported wage dataset in the United States.
P10 through P90 percentiles represent the wage distribution across all surveyed employers (not self-reported by workers). Geographic adjustments use BLS-derived cost multipliers calibrated from regional wage variation.
Wages are estimates. Individual compensation depends on experience, education, employer size, industry, and negotiation. Use this as benchmark context, not absolute ground truth.
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