---
title: "Urban Forester"
description: "Manages the trees of a city or town, from street trees and parks to canopy planning, planting programs and tree risk."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/urban-forester"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Urban Forester

**Category:** Life, Physical, and Social Science · **SOC code:** 19-1032 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 19-1032.00

Manages the trees of a city or town, from street trees and parks to canopy planning, planting programs and tree risk.

Also advertised as: City Forester; Municipal Forester; Community Forester; Urban Forestry Manager; Street Tree Manager.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $76,400 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $36.73/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $50,790 to $109,700, with the middle half between $62,710 and $91,640
- **Total US employment:** 10,430
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.2% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 900 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 48/100 — 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 10,430 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $50,790 |
| 25th | $62,710 |
| 50th (median) | $76,400 |
| 75th | $91,640 |
| 90th | $109,700 |
| Mean (average) | $79,170 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $107,120 | $96,749 | 820 |
| MA | $89,650 | $84,770 | 130 |
| AK | $87,210 | $85,200 | 80 |
| SC | $86,780 | $92,566 | 250 |
| MD | $86,100 | $82,032 | 120 |
| CT | $84,820 | $81,865 | 60 |
| IA | $83,000 | $94,574 | 50 |
| IL | $82,160 | $82,195 | 220 |
| OR | $81,450 | $78,801 | 670 |
| VT | $80,750 | $82,433 | 80 |
| TX | $80,370 | $82,807 | 210 |
| AL | $79,530 | $89,538 | 240 |
| WA | $78,460 | $73,318 | 950 |
| PA | $78,280 | $80,228 | 310 |
| NC | $77,870 | $82,554 | Not published by BLS |

29 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 44 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/urban-forester/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/urban-forester.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 13,200 in the 2025–2035 base year to 13,500 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 300 jobs, or +2.2%. Slower than average: 2.2% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 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.

## What the work involves

- Maintain the city tree inventory in GIS
- Inspect trees and assess risk to people and property
- Plan and oversee tree planting programs
- Manage pruning and removal contracts
- Review development plans for tree protection
- Respond to pest outbreaks and storm damage
- Run community outreach and volunteer planting events

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — 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 3.3 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.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Biology — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Geography — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral 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
- Category Flexibility — 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 Comprehension — importance 3.9 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), Investigative (I), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.52 |
| I — Investigative | 4.76 |
| C — Conventional | 4.36 |
| E — Enterprising | 4.09 |
| S — Social | 2.30 |
| A — Artistic | 1.25 |

### 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 | 91.4 |
| ESTJ | 80.9 |
| ISTP | 75.0 |
| INTJ | 72.0 |
| ISFJ | 66.7 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Forester](https://nuecareer.com/careers/forester) — median $76,400
- [Forest and Conservation Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/forest-and-conservation-technician) — median $54,560
- [Range Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/range-manager) — median $73,010
- [Conservation Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/conservation-scientist) — median $73,010
- [Forest and Conservation Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/forest-and-conservation-worker) — median $43,680
- [Environmental Restoration Planner](https://nuecareer.com/careers/environmental-restoration-planner) — median $82,220
- [Environmental Scientist and Specialist, Including Health](https://nuecareer.com/careers/environmental-scientist-and-specialist) — median $82,220
- [Soil and Plant Scientist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/soil-and-plant-scientist) — median $78,850
- [Industrial Ecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/industrial-ecologist) — median $82,220
- [Forest Fire Inspector and Prevention Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/forest-fire-inspector-and-prevention-specialist) — median $56,870

## 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/urban-forester