---
title: "What can you do with a chemistry degree?"
description: "15 careers chemistry graduates commonly move into, with BLS median pay, projected growth and entry requirements for each."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors/chemistry"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T07:20:09.337Z"
---

# What can you do with a chemistry degree?

**What the degree involves:** Organic, physical, and analytical chemistry, with lab reports every single week.

Chemistry graduates mostly go where the analysis happens: quality control, testing laboratories, manufacturing and forensics. The degree also travels sideways into materials, food, pharmaceuticals and regulatory work, and several of the research destinations below need a doctorate.

15 common destinations, ordered most common first rather than highest paid first. 3 of 15 have a master's or a doctoral or professional degree as their BLS typical entry education, and 14 of 15 are projected to grow. A major is a body of study, not a job assignment: these are destinations of people who took the degree, not what the degree entitles anyone to.

| # | Occupation | Median annual wage | Projected change | Openings a year | Typical entry education |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| 1 | Chemical Technician | $60,390 | +3.7% | 6,700 | Associate's |
| 2 | Quality Control Analyst | $62,280 | +3.5% | 10,600 | Associate's |
| 3 | Chemist | $91,240 | +4.9% | 6,300 | Bachelor's |
| 4 | [Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laboratory-technologist) | $62,930 | +1.7% | 22,600 | Bachelor's |
| 5 | Forensic Science Technician | $72,060 | +12.8% | 2,900 | Bachelor's |
| 6 | [High School Teacher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/high-school-teacher) | $72,040 | -1.6% | 66,200 | Bachelor's |
| 7 | Food Scientist and Technologist | $88,720 | +6.5% | 1,200 | Bachelor's |
| 8 | [Regulatory Affairs Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/regulatory-affairs-specialist) | $80,730 | +3.0% | 33,300 | Bachelor's |
| 9 | [Sales Representative, Wholesale and Manufacturing, Technical and Scientific Product](https://nuecareer.com/careers/sales-representative-wholesale-and-manufacturing-technical-and-scientific-product) | $104,920 | +1.9% | 27,200 | Bachelor's |
| 10 | Environmental Scientist and Specialist, Including Health | $82,220 | +4.4% | 8,500 | Bachelor's |
| 11 | Chemical Engineer | $125,040 | +2.6% | 1,100 | Bachelor's |
| 12 | Materials Scientist | $117,790 | +4.9% | 600 | Bachelor's |
| 13 | Biochemist and Biophysicist | $127,410 | +5.8% | 2,900 | Doctorate (graduate study) |
| 14 | [Pharmacist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pharmacist) | $140,910 | +4.6% | 14,200 | Doctorate (graduate study) |
| 15 | Chemistry Teacher, Postsecondary | $93,250 | +2.2% | 1,900 | Doctorate (graduate study) |

Wages are BLS OEWS, May 2025. Projected change, annual openings and typical entry education are BLS Employment Projections. Occupation descriptions are O\*NET. Nothing on this page is estimated and no figure is generated by an AI model.

Full record for any row, including wage percentiles and state-level pay: https://nuecareer.com/careers/{slug} or https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/{slug}. Other majors: https://nuecareer.com/careers/majors

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 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