---
title: "Psychometrician"
description: "Uses statistics to design, score and validate standardized tests such as licensing exams, state assessments and admissions tests."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/psychometrician"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Psychometrician

**Category:** Computer and Mathematical · **SOC code:** 15-2041 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 15-2041.00

Uses statistics to design, score and validate standardized tests such as licensing exams, state assessments and admissions tests.

Also advertised as: Measurement Scientist; Assessment Psychometrician; Senior Psychometrician; Research Scientist, Psychometrics.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $105,650 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $50.79/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $64,000 to $174,050, with the middle half between $82,220 and $141,490
- **Total US employment:** 29,030
- **Typical entry education:** Master's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +11.0% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 1,900 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 4/100 — 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 29,030 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $64,000 |
| 25th | $82,220 |
| 50th (median) | $105,650 |
| 75th | $141,490 |
| 90th | $174,050 |
| Mean (average) | $115,700 |

### 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 | $140,670 | $127,997 | 550 |
| NY | $136,020 | $126,037 | 1,220 |
| CA | $135,960 | $122,796 | 2,480 |
| MD | $132,620 | $126,354 | 2,730 |
| IL | $119,760 | $119,810 | 480 |
| NJ | $118,280 | $108,708 | 880 |
| NC | $115,690 | $122,649 | 1,200 |
| GA | $115,150 | $119,583 | 460 |
| VA | $114,920 | $113,665 | 720 |
| KY | $112,520 | $124,802 | 80 |
| KS | $111,780 | $124,106 | 80 |
| CO | $109,660 | $106,412 | 780 |
| DE | $109,570 | $109,781 | 70 |
| IN | $109,300 | $117,113 | 230 |
| FL | $108,040 | $104,473 | 550 |

31 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 46 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/psychometrician/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/psychometrician.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 31,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 34,700 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 3,400 jobs, or +11.0%. Much faster than average: 11.0% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 1,900 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:** Master's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 61.9% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 14.3% |
| Doctoral Degree | 9.5% |
| Some College Courses | 4.8% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 4.8% |
| Post-Doctoral Training | 4.8% |

## What the work involves

- Analyze field-test data to evaluate test questions
- Apply item response theory to calibrate items
- Equate scores across different forms of a test
- Run analyses to detect items biased against groups
- Facilitate standard-setting studies to choose passing scores
- Design computer-adaptive testing algorithms
- Write technical reports documenting validity and reliability

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Mathematics — importance 4.9 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
- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.5 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 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Programming — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Mathematics — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 2.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 2.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Mathematical Reasoning — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Number Facility — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral 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

## 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), Conventional (C), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 6.58 |
| C — Conventional | 6.03 |
| R — Realistic | 3.11 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.82 |
| A — Artistic | 1.77 |
| S — Social | 1.71 |

### 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 | 84.3 |
| INTJ | 82.0 |
| ISTP | 71.5 |
| ISFJ | 64.6 |
| ESTJ | 63.6 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ, INTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Statistician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/statistician) — median $105,650
- [Data Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/data-scientist) — median $120,230
- [Biostatistician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/biostatistician) — median $105,650
- [Clinical Data Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-data-manager) — median $120,230
- [Mathematician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mathematician) — median $126,710
- [Bioinformatics Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/bioinformatics-scientist) — median $98,920
- [Financial Quantitative Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/financial-quantitative-analyst) — median $81,100
- [Survey Researcher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/survey-researcher) — median $69,460
- [Operations Research Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/operations-research-analyst) — median $88,940
- [Computer and Information Research Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/computer-and-information-research-scientist) — median $140,300

## 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/psychometrician