---
title: "Perfumer"
description: "Creates fragrances for perfumes, personal care, and household products by blending natural and synthetic raw materials into formulas."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/perfumer"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Perfumer

**Category:** Life, Physical, and Social Science · **SOC code:** 19-2031 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 19-2031.00

Creates fragrances for perfumes, personal care, and household products by blending natural and synthetic raw materials into formulas.

Also advertised as: Fragrance Chemist; Junior Perfumer; Senior Perfumer; Fine Fragrance Perfumer; Fragrance Creator.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $91,240 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $43.87/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $58,460 to $160,830, with the middle half between $69,460 and $125,550
- **Total US employment:** 82,770
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +6.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 5,900 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 34/100 — 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 82,770 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $58,460 |
| 25th | $69,460 |
| 50th (median) | $91,240 |
| 75th | $125,550 |
| 90th | $160,830 |
| Mean (average) | $100,450 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $149,860 | $136,359 | 280 |
| MD | $140,670 | $134,024 | 2,480 |
| DE | $129,860 | $130,110 | 1,200 |
| NM | $126,960 | $137,683 | 280 |
| MA | $125,000 | $118,195 | 3,430 |
| AK | $106,010 | $103,567 | 60 |
| OR | $104,590 | $101,189 | 730 |
| LA | $103,890 | $117,780 | 740 |
| WY | $102,000 | $110,043 | 80 |
| CO | $101,980 | $98,960 | 1,790 |
| RI | $101,660 | $99,394 | 150 |
| NH | $100,050 | $96,050 | 300 |
| TX | $99,640 | $102,661 | 5,130 |
| MN | $99,280 | $100,668 | 1,680 |
| CT | $98,140 | $94,721 | 1,170 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/perfumer/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/perfumer.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 84,900 in the 2025–2035 base year to 90,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 5,500 jobs, or +6.4%. Faster than average: 6.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 5,900 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:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 55.9% |
| Doctoral Degree | 30.0% |
| Master's Degree | 9.9% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 4.2% |

## What the work involves

- Interpret client briefs for fragrance projects
- Compose fragrance formulas from natural and synthetic materials
- Evaluate trial blends and refine formulas
- Adjust fragrances for stability in different product bases
- Work with regulatory teams to meet fragrance safety standards
- Present fragrance submissions to clients with evaluators
- Study new raw materials and maintain a scent memory

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Science — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.6 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.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Quality Control Analysis — 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
- 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
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Chemistry — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — 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
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 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 Investigative (I), Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 6.71 |
| R — Realistic | 5.67 |
| C — Conventional | 4.81 |
| A — Artistic | 3.08 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.60 |
| S — Social | 1.14 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| INTJ | 88.4 |
| ISTP | 85.9 |
| ISTJ | 84.7 |
| INTP | 75.4 |
| ISFJ | 57.1 |

Best-fitting types: INTJ, ISTP, ISTJ. The bank also flags this occupation as introvert-friendly, meaning O\*NET work-context ratings put it low on public contact and performing for the public.

## Related occupations

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

- [Chemist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chemist) — median $91,240
- [Chemical Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chemical-engineer) — median $125,040
- [Biochemist and Biophysicist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/biochemist-and-biophysicist) — median $127,410
- [Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laboratory-technologist) — median $62,930
- [Microbiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/microbiologist) — median $87,990
- [Materials Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/materials-scientist) — median $117,790
- [Materials Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/materials-engineer) — median $112,860
- [Bioengineer and Biomedical Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/bioengineer-and-biomedical-engineer) — median $109,370
- [Food Scientist and Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-scientist-and-technologist) — median $88,720
- [Industrial Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-engineer) — median $102,440

## 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/perfumer