---
title: "Agricultural Inspector"
description: "Inspect agricultural commodities, processing equipment, and facilities, and fish and logging operations, to ensure compliance with regulations and laws…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-inspector"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Agricultural Inspector

**Category:** Farming, Fishing, and Forestry · **SOC code:** 45-2011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 45-2011.00

Inspect agricultural commodities, processing equipment, and facilities, and fish and logging operations, to ensure compliance with regulations and laws governing health, quality, and safety.

Also advertised as: Agricultural Commodities Grader (ACG); Agricultural Products Agent; Apiary Inspector; Brand Inspector; CSI (Consumer Safety Inspector); Food Inspector; Food Safety Inspector; FSIS Inspector (Food Safety and Inspection Service Inspector).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $49,940 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $24.01/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $37,020 to $79,580, with the middle half between $42,330 and $64,500
- **Total US employment:** 14,410
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.3% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 2,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 43/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 14,410 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $37,020 |
| 25th | $42,330 |
| 50th (median) | $49,940 |
| 75th | $64,500 |
| 90th | $79,580 |
| Mean (average) | $54,910 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| MN | $77,150 | $78,229 | 180 |
| NY | $73,920 | $68,495 | 340 |
| OH | $69,280 | $74,676 | 210 |
| MI | $65,730 | $68,314 | 320 |
| VT | $63,630 | $64,956 | 60 |
| LA | $63,130 | $71,570 | 150 |
| WA | $62,880 | $58,759 | 450 |
| IL | $62,000 | $62,026 | 470 |
| HI | $60,650 | $55,161 | 90 |
| MD | $58,160 | $55,412 | 150 |
| ND | $57,590 | $64,738 | 80 |
| PA | $55,650 | $57,035 | 520 |
| NE | $55,090 | $61,141 | 370 |
| UT | $53,930 | $54,550 | 120 |
| WI | $53,640 | $57,006 | 220 |

28 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 43 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-inspector/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/agricultural-inspector.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 17,800 in the 2025–2035 base year to 18,200 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 400 jobs, or +2.3%. Slower than average: 2.3% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 2,500 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 56.2% |
| Some College Courses | 12.5% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 12.2% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 10.3% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 7.0% |
| First Professional Degree | 1.8% |

## What the work involves

- Collect samples from animals, plants, or products and route them to laboratories for microbiological assessment, ingredient verification, or other testing.
- Inspect agricultural commodities or related operations, as well as fish or logging operations, for compliance with laws and regulations governing health, quality, and safety.
- Interpret and enforce government acts and regulations and explain required standards to agricultural workers.
- Verify that transportation and handling procedures meet regulatory requirements.
- Provide consultative services in areas such as equipment or product evaluation, plant construction or layout, or food safety systems.
- Inspect the cleanliness and practices of establishment employees.
- Write reports of findings and recommendations and advise farmers, growers, or processors of corrective action to be taken.
- Examine, weigh, and measure commodities, such as poultry, eggs, meat, or seafood to certify qualities, grades, and weights.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Quality Control Analysis — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Realistic (R), Conventional (C), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.35 |
| C — Conventional | 5.17 |
| I — Investigative | 4.04 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.12 |
| S — Social | 1.89 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 95.9 |
| ESTJ | 82.7 |
| ISFJ | 75.1 |
| ISTP | 75.0 |
| INTJ | 71.0 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Construction and Building Inspector](https://nuecareer.com/careers/construction-and-building-inspector) — median $74,690
- [Food Science Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-science-technician) — median $52,130
- [First-Line Supervisor of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-farming-fishing-and-forestry-workers) — median $59,320
- [Aviation Inspector](https://nuecareer.com/careers/aviation-inspector) — median $92,100
- [Agricultural Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/agricultural-technician) — median $49,630
- [Occupational Health and Safety Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-health-and-safety-technician) — median $61,560
- [Grader and Sorter, Agricultural Products](https://nuecareer.com/careers/grader-and-sorter-agricultural-products) — median $35,730
- [Transportation Vehicle, Equipment and Systems Inspector, Except Aviation](https://nuecareer.com/careers/transportation-vehicle-equipment-and-systems-inspector) — median $92,100
- [Inspector, Tester, Sorter, Sampler, and Weigher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/inspector-tester-sorter-sampler-and-weigher) — median $48,570
- [Weigher, Measurer, Checker, and Sampler, Recordkeeping](https://nuecareer.com/careers/weigher-measurer-checker-and-sampler-recordkeeping) — median $46,380

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/agricultural-inspector