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Job outlook for environmental service technicians in the United States
Environmental service technician job growth summary. After extensive research, interviews, and analysis, Zippia's data science team found that:
The projected environmental service technician job growth rate is 9% from 2018-2028.
About 3,200 new jobs for environmental service technicians are projected over the next decade.
Environmental service technician salaries have increased 8% for environmental service technicians in the last 5 years.
There are over 19,496 environmental service technicians currently employed in the United States.
There are 83,697 active environmental service technician job openings in the US.
The average environmental service technician salary is $30,862.
Are environmental service technician jobs in demand?
Environmental service technician job and salary trends over time
Environmental service technician jobs over time
Environmental service technician job growth rate over time
| Year | # of jobs | % of population |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 19,496 | 0.01% |
| 2020 | 20,384 | 0.01% |
| 2019 | 22,380 | 0.01% |
| 2018 | 21,685 | 0.01% |
| 2017 | 21,733 | 0.01% |
Average environmental service technician salary over time
Environmental service technician salary by year
| Year | Avg. salary | Hourly rate | % Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | $30,862 | $14.84 | +0.4% |
| 2025 | $30,728 | $14.77 | +3.2% |
| 2024 | $29,779 | $14.32 | +1.5% |
| 2023 | $29,340 | $14.11 | +2.9% |
| 2022 | $28,502 | $13.70 | +2.7% |
Environmental service technician jobs by state
Most common states for environmental service technicians
| Rank | State | Population | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Iowa | 3,145,711 | 1,092 | 35% |
| 2 | Maine | 1,335,907 | 352 | 26% |
| 3 | Alaska | 739,795 | 186 | 25% |
| 4 | Nebraska | 1,920,076 | 431 | 22% |
| 5 | District of Columbia | 693,972 | 153 | 22% |
| 6 | New Hampshire | 1,342,795 | 270 | 20% |
| 7 | North Dakota | 755,393 | 154 | 20% |
| 8 | Vermont | 623,657 | 123 | 20% |
| 9 | Massachusetts | 6,859,819 | 1,281 | 19% |
| 10 | Minnesota | 5,576,606 | 1,041 | 19% |
| 11 | Delaware | 961,939 | 179 | 19% |
| 12 | Georgia | 10,429,379 | 1,902 | 18% |
| 13 | Colorado | 5,607,154 | 983 | 18% |
| 14 | Virginia | 8,470,020 | 1,428 | 17% |
| 15 | Indiana | 6,666,818 | 1,108 | 17% |
| 16 | Montana | 1,050,493 | 182 | 17% |
| 17 | South Dakota | 869,666 | 147 | 17% |
| 18 | Wisconsin | 5,795,483 | 932 | 16% |
| 19 | Connecticut | 3,588,184 | 572 | 16% |
| 20 | Utah | 3,101,833 | 483 | 16% |
Most common cities for environmental service technicians
| Rank | City | # of jobs | Employment/ 1000ppl | Avg. salary |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Fargo | 83 | 69% | $32,796 |
| 2 | Bangor | 14 | 44% | $29,710 |
| 3 | Bismarck | 12 | 17% | $32,868 |
| 4 | Lancaster | 8 | 14% | $28,561 |
| 5 | Newport Beach | 9 | 10% | $37,257 |
| 6 | Portland | 7 | 10% | $30,242 |
| 7 | Baytown | 5 | 7% | $31,652 |
| 8 | Grand Rapids | 11 | 6% | $30,578 |
| 9 | Sioux Falls | 10 | 6% | $28,777 |
| 10 | Olathe | 6 | 4% | $28,364 |
| 11 | Atlanta | 12 | 3% | $26,491 |
| 12 | Irvine | 9 | 3% | $37,241 |
| 13 | Miami | 7 | 2% | $26,049 |
| 14 | Baltimore | 7 | 1% | $30,546 |
| 15 | Houston | 9 | 0% | $31,680 |
Environmental Service Technician job outlook: Expert opinions
Our panel of environmental service technician experts
Bellarmine University
Michigan State University
Drake University
Gonzaga University
University of North Alabama
Kennesaw State University
University of Minnesota
North Carolina State University
University of Puerto Rico-RP
Denison University
The Wildlife Society
Bethune-Cookman University
Indiana University Bloomington
University of South Dakota
What general advice would you give to an Environmental Service Technician?
Martha Carlson Mazur PhD: Be a contributing member of the communities you occupy. Forming authentic relationships builds the network that will lead to opportunities for advancement.
What will help Environmental Service Technicians increase their earning potential?
Justin Kunkle PhD: People in forestry enjoy working outdoors, connecting with nature, and contributing to conservation efforts. However, challenges may include long hours, physical labor, and dealing with unpredictable weather conditions.
Keith Summerville
Levitt Distinguished Professor of Environmental Science, Paul and Claudia Schickler Executive Director, Jay N. Darling InstituteDrake University
Natural Resources Conservation And Research
What will help Environmental Service Technicians increase their earning potential?
Keith Summerville: 3. Get as many internships as one can get during time at Drake and develop some fairly deep taxa or field of specialty expertise so that you can hit the ground running in a career.
Dr. Greg Gordon Professor/Chair
Professor/ChairGonzaga University
Natural Resources Conservation And Research
What general advice would you give to an Environmental Service Technician?
Dr. Greg Gordon Professor/Chair: Find work in another field! LOL. Seriously, the benefits of environmental work cannot be monetized.
What will help Environmental Service Technicians increase their earning potential?
Dr. Greg Gordon Professor/Chair: We find that graphical information systems (GIS) skills are in high demand. Soft skills such as ability to work as a team, develop work plans, collaborate and communicate with diverse stakeholders, communicate technical and scientific information, are, and will be very important in the near and long term future.
Michael Pretes
Professor and Chair of Geoscience, University of North AlabamaUniversity of North Alabama
Geography And Cartography
What soft skills should all Environmental Service Technicians possess?
Michael Pretes: Good communication skills are essential for Environmental Analyst positions, as indeed they are for most jobs. This means good written, oral, and visual communication skills. Writing skills are used in everything from emails to technical reports. Oral communication skills are essential when speaking to individuals and to small and large groups. And visual communication skills are increasingly important in everything from social media to the production of maps, charts, and images.
What skills will help Environmental Service Technicians earn the most?
Michael Pretes: The above two abilities--good communication skills and experience with Remote Sensing technologies--will give anyone an edge. Having a Master's degree or extensive field experience can also help boost your salary.
What skills stand out on Environmental Service Technician resumes?
Michael Pretes: Environmental Analyst jobs are increasingly important, given greater impact and awareness of sustainability and climate change issues. Environmental Analysts help determine the environmental impacts of human actions and corporate and government policies. They also help corporations and government agencies achieve compliance with environmental regulations. Work, internship, or volunteer experience in areas related to the job really stands out on a resume. This could mean work that involves either field experience or policy development and reports writing. Field experience can mean the collection of land, water, or atmospheric data in the area of impact rather than from textual sources. Each type of data collection will require its own set of skills. Having been involved in policy decisions or having written and published reports on environmental conditions or impacts also looks good for some types of jobs.
Dr. Dan Ferreira Ph.D.
Associate Professor of Environmental ScienceKennesaw State University
Ecology, Evolution, and Organismal Biology
What Environmental Service Technician skills would you recommend for someone trying to advance their career?
Dr. Dan Ferreira Ph.D.: I think the best advice I can offer recent graduates is to be as flexible as possible. Being willing to relocate, for example, vastly expands the number of potential jobs they can apply to. Applying for positions that might not be exactly where they want to go, but might give them the experience or skills they need to get to their desired career after a year or two also will help open more doors. So if you can't find your ideal job right away, consider that internship or volunteer opportunity that will make you more marketable in the future.
Erin Surdo Ph.D.
Teaching Assistant Professor and Director of Undergraduate Studies, Environmental EngineeringUniversity of Minnesota
Department of Civil, Environmental, and Geo- Engineering
What skills stand out on Environmental Service Technician resumes?
Erin Surdo Ph.D.: Students with strong oral communication and project management skills and technical background in material balances and fluid mechanics often succeed in environmental engineering careers.
What soft skills should all Environmental Service Technicians possess?
Sam Cook: Soft skills required by our graduates: reading comprehension/writing/speaking/active listening, monitoring, critical thinking, time management, complex problem solving, and social perceptiveness
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Environmental Service Technicians?
Elvia Melendez-Ackerman Ph.D.: An unwritten rule is that the more marketable college graduates not only finish with an appropriate selection of content courses but also with a myriad of hands-on experiences where the student has had the opportunity to develop and strengthen scientific and technical skills, but just as important are the soft skills expected in their chosen profession. Many of these hands-on experiences occur off campus and indeed these are highly encouraged by academic advisors. For most students graduating after 2020, the pandemic reduced the number of opportunities in which they engaged in these types of activities, reducing their number of hours spent in "job-like" settings. It is in these settings where students can develop and demonstrate their leadership, teamwork and, organizational skills and, their ability to get the job done.
Because these off-campus experiences are carried out under supervision, they become important sources of letters of recommendations for employment from experts that truly know how they can perform under different situations. In the short-term, COVID-19 and events with similar outcomes (i.e.. shutdown of educational facilities) could be viewed as a selective factor that would favor those students that engaged early in their undergraduate degree in complementary activities (i.e., internships, volunteer work in research projects, research for credit, etc.). Within that context, shutdowns related to the pandemic might have impacted job preparedness of students from different socio-economic backgrounds differently. For those students that needed to work to pay for college, engaging early in ancillary professional activities might not have been an option. Socio-economic disparities in terms of access to technology (good computer, high speed internet) may have also led to unequal learning experiences. I taught a course in drone technologies where we managed to purchase GIS software licenses to allow students to work on simple spatial analyses remotely, but some students just did not have the computing capacity to operate these at home and ended up having to watch others.
For employers looking to hire recent college graduates that can do reliable fieldwork and perform well under fieldwork conditions (e.g., research areas related to environmental, social, or social-environmental work), the pool of experienced students would now be reduced. At the same time, college graduates will have a tougher time accruing the much-needed experience time that will make them competitive.
What technology do you think will become more important and prevalent for Environmental Service Technicians in the next 3-5 years?
Dr. Doug Spieles Ph.D.: I would place data science and geographic information systems at the top of the list. We live in the information age, which is both exciting and overwhelming. I believe that we will increasingly need scientists who know how to obtain and use data to solve spatially explicit environmental problems.
Will there be an enduring impact of the coronavirus pandemic on Environmental Service Technicians?
Jamila Blake: Impacts of the coronavirus will definitely be seen in the lack of opportunities for in-person interactions, training, and work opportunities, but it is certainly not all bad. While students may have been hoping to gain some field experience, remote or modified positions have been developed, and a number of online learning opportunities have been enhanced to continue students' skill-building. Many organizations have been able to adapt to virtual workplaces, events, and professional development offerings - such as conferences, workshops, mentorship connections, and networking events. This year of adjusting and learning will likely enable the wildlife field to be more flexible with remote working options.
Dr. Michael Reiter Ph.D.
Professor, Director, and ChairBethune-Cookman University
Department of Integrated Environmental Science
What type of skills will young Environmental Service Technicians need?
Dr. Michael Reiter Ph.D.: Most of what graduates will need are the same things that have been desired for some time: the ability to communicate effectively, write clearly, analyze data correctly, think and reason logically, and adapt what they know for use in changing or unexpected situations. Careers in this field are also considered competitive, so practical work experience or internships related to your ultimate goal are a big plus. However, particularly with our recent experience with the COVID pandemic, our attention is turning more quickly to remote technologies, sustainable lifestyles, and quality of life issues (many of which are impacted directly by environmental factors). As a result, new graduates will probably also need to be comfortable with new technologies, their possible use in problem-solving, and their integration into the chosen field of study or career.
Are there any particularly good places in the United States for Environmental Service Technicians to find work opportunities?
Vicky Meretsky Ph.D.: Yes. The public, private, and nonprofit sectors are particularly useful.
What type of skills will young Environmental Service Technicians need?
Meghann Jarchow Ph.D.: The field of sustainability is broad, and as such, there is a diversity of skillsets that can aid young graduates in finding that first job after graduation. There are many careers within sustainability where there is a growing demand for computer skills, such as programming and geospatial analysis. Environmental and social issues are incredibly complicated and require massive amounts of data to analyze, and computers are an essential tool to help understand these data. Strong interpersonal skills, including teamwork and written and oral communication, are incredibly crucial in other fields.