![]() A meteorologist also makes observations about the atmosphere’s physical characteristics and makes forecasts on television and the internet. Pay scales may also differ for broadcast companies that have a national market.A meteorologist is a person who focuses on watching and studying the weather. Last year, I documented in Forbes that many young and mid-career TV meteorologists were getting out of the business due to salaries that were not consistent with increasing work responsibilities. ![]() This range also is a cautionary note that the TV industry is one that starts pretty low on the "salary and glamour" totem pole initially and will require steps from smaller markets to larger markets to advance in salary (see market table below). I have some friends in the business (you know who you are) that are certainly "north" of $400,000. For example, the table also indicates that the range of salaries for weathercasters is $23,000 to $400,000. This is a clear example of how median and mean can differ as a function of outlier or extreme values. The table above reveals the average "weathercaster" is still one of the highest paid positions in a newsroom with a mean (median) of $74,100 ($63,000). Newsroom salaries (2016) RTDNA and Hofstra University Topics in the series were released every two weeks, including what's new online, social media and mobile strategies, television and radio budgets and profits, stations doing news, news director profiles, and our most popular areas of research broadcast newsroom staffing, women and minorities in newsrooms, and newsroom salaries." "T his is the ninth of nine installments for this year in a series of reports developed from RTDNA's annual survey of newsrooms across the United States. Bob Papper, Professor Emeritus - Hofstra University writes on the RTDNA website, OK, so let's get back to that RTDNA survey that prompted this blog. ![]() It is likely that the BLS database also includes academic or government type jobs that require advanced degrees, which may also explain its higher median salary. It is clear to me that the numbers will depend on the sample of jobs in the database of the specific provider. Interestingly, Payscale has a different set of salary statistics. For a current salary snapshot at Glassdoor, click this link and browse. Their number of $62,992 is based on 180 salaries currently in its market database and includes the National Weather Service, military, broadcast sector and the private sector. Further, new laws and profit opportunities are driving established companies and start-ups like IBM, Panasonic, ClimaCell and WeatherSTEM into the market (among others).Ī quick browse of the job board Glassdoor shows a smaller mean salary than the BLS median. This should not be surprising if you think about everything that weather and climate impacts: aviation, insurance, energy, agriculture, commodities, policy and so forth. However, it is clear to me (and has been for several years) that the private sector is where significant growth is happening. In fact, recent stories have documented staff shortages at National Weather Service offices, which suggests there is possible job growth in that sector. ![]() Yes, federal meteorologist and broadcast jobs are still out there. I now tell my students to be more versatile in thinking about where they can work given the robust science, math, computational, GIS, analytical and other skills gained in a good meteorology curriculum. This last point is an important one because when I was a meteorologist student (eons ago), I think most students hoped to work as a forecaster for the National Weather Service or on TV. The BLS also notes that job growth for meteorologists from 2014 to 2024 is expected to be 9% faster than average and that the best prospects will be in the private sector. It is similar to mean but is preferred in some cases because it is not as influenced by outliers (relative big or small numbers). The median is the middle value in a range of sorted data. According to the BLS, the median salary in 2016 for atmospheric scientists (including meteorologists) was $92,460. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) is the federal agency that tracks employment data. The American Meteorological Society has defined meteorologist at the request of various employers that needed a standard definition. There are many outstanding colleagues that work in the military, weather forecasting and other communities that may not meet the criteria provided by the AMS, but for the sake of this article, I will use their guidelines.
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