---
title: "Quality Control Analyst"
description: "Conduct tests to determine quality of raw materials, bulk intermediate and finished products. May conduct stability sample tests."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/quality-control-analyst"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Quality Control Analyst

**Category:** Life, Physical, and Social Science · **SOC code:** 19-4099 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 19-4099.01

Conduct tests to determine quality of raw materials, bulk intermediate and finished products. May conduct stability sample tests.

Also advertised as: Lab Analyst; Lab Technician (Lab Tech); Laboratory Analyst; Microbiology Lab Analyst; QA Auditor (Quality Assurance Auditor); QA Lab Tech (Quality Assurance Lab Technician); QA Tech (Quality Assurance Technician); Quality Control Analyst (QC Analyst).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $62,280 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $29.94/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $39,000 to $102,690, with the middle half between $48,030 and $79,780
- **Total US employment:** 73,910
- **Typical entry education:** Associate's
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 11,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 25/100 — 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 73,910 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $39,000 |
| 25th | $48,030 |
| 50th (median) | $62,280 |
| 75th | $79,780 |
| 90th | $102,690 |
| Mean (average) | $66,280 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| OK | $86,260 | $98,198 | 460 |
| DC | $79,230 | $72,092 | 150 |
| CA | $78,350 | $70,764 | 10,090 |
| WA | $73,530 | $68,711 | 980 |
| AK | $70,700 | $69,071 | 170 |
| RI | $69,630 | $68,078 | 210 |
| ND | $69,350 | $77,957 | 180 |
| GA | $69,320 | $71,989 | 2,230 |
| MD | $68,390 | $65,159 | 3,510 |
| KY | $68,230 | $75,677 | 320 |
| VA | $67,240 | $66,506 | 2,710 |
| ME | $66,730 | $68,758 | 390 |
| CT | $66,710 | $64,386 | 320 |
| KS | $65,270 | $72,467 | 880 |
| WY | $64,510 | $69,597 | 220 |

36 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 51 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/quality-control-analyst/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/quality-control-analyst.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 89,500 in the 2025–2035 base year to 93,400 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 3,900 jobs, or +4.4%. About as fast as average: 4.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 11,200 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:** Associate's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium 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 |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 37.8% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 27.9% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 10.2% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 9.6% |
| Some College Courses | 8.8% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 5.7% |

## What the work involves

- Investigate or report questionable test results.
- Ensure that lab cleanliness and safety standards are maintained.
- Conduct routine and non-routine analyses of in-process materials, raw materials, environmental samples, finished goods, or stability samples.
- Calibrate, validate, or maintain laboratory equipment.
- Complete documentation needed to support testing procedures, including data capture forms, equipment logbooks, or inventory forms.
- Interpret test results, compare them to established specifications and control limits, and make recommendations on appropriateness of data for release.
- Monitor testing procedures to ensure that all tests are performed according to established item specifications, standard test methods, or protocols.
- Compile laboratory test data and perform appropriate analyses.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.0 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 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Troubleshooting — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — 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

### Knowledge areas

- Mathematics — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Production and Processing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Chemistry — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.6 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 Conventional (C), Investigative (I), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 6.00 |
| I — Investigative | 4.88 |
| R — Realistic | 4.11 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.60 |
| S — Social | 1.21 |
| 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 | 94.5 |
| ESTJ | 78.0 |
| INTJ | 77.5 |
| ISTP | 73.4 |
| ISFJ | 72.8 |

Best-fitting types: 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.

- [Quality Control Systems Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/quality-control-systems-manager) — median $126,060
- [Validation Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/validation-engineer) — median $102,440
- [Industrial Engineer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-engineer) — median $102,440
- [Chemical Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chemical-technician) — median $60,390
- [Calibration Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/calibration-technologist-and-technician) — median $67,820
- [Industrial Engineering Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-engineering-technologist-and-technician) — median $66,120
- [Food Science Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/food-science-technician) — median $52,130
- [QA Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/qa-analyst) — median $104,300
- [Chemist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/chemist) — median $91,240
- [Inspector, Tester, Sorter, Sampler, and Weigher](https://nuecareer.com/careers/inspector-tester-sorter-sampler-and-weigher) — median $48,570

## 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/quality-control-analyst