How Much Money Does A Weather Forecaster Make

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Aug 14, 2017, 11:35am EDT |

A Look At What Meteorologists Earn

Marshall Shepherd

This article is more than 4 years old.

As the director of an Atmospheric Sciences program at a major University, I am often asked by students for information on salaries. Though my experience with meteorologists tells me that most get into the field because of passion for weather, the reality of the situation is that they have to eat and pay the bills too. My good friend and National Weather Association President-Elect Alan Sealls recently alerted me to the release of a newsroom survey of salaries by the Radio, Television Digital News Association (RTDNA) and Hofstra University. This survey includes information on "Weathercasters," a generic term used in the television industry because not everyone that presents the weather necessarily holds an actual degree in meteorology, though I suspect most do. Though less than 10% of meteorologists are actually in the television industry, the RTDNA survey prompted me to provide a contemporary look at what meteorologists earn.

The American Meteorological Society has defined meteorologist at the request of various employers that needed a standard definition. There are many outstanding colleagues that work in the military, weather forecasting and other communities that may not meet the criteria provided by the AMS, but for the sake of this article, I will use their guidelines. The Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS) is the federal agency that tracks employment data. According to the BLS, the median salary in 2016 for atmospheric scientists (including meteorologists) was $92,460. The median is the middle value in a range of sorted data. It is similar to mean but is preferred in some cases because it is not as influenced by outliers (relative big or small numbers). The BLS also notes that job growth for meteorologists from 2014 to 2024 is expected to be 9% faster than average and that the best prospects will be in the private sector.

This last point is an important one because when I was a meteorologist student (eons ago), I think most students hoped to work as a forecaster for the National Weather Service or on TV. I now tell my students to be more versatile in thinking about where they can work given the robust science, math, computational, GIS, analytical and other skills gained in a good meteorology curriculum. Yes, federal meteorologist and broadcast jobs are still out there. In fact, recent stories have documented staff shortages at National Weather Service offices, which suggests there is possible job growth in that sector. However, it is clear to me (and has been for several years) that the private sector is where significant growth is happening. This should not be surprising if you think about everything that weather and climate impacts: aviation, insurance, energy, agriculture, commodities, policy and so forth. Further, new laws and profit opportunities are driving established companies and start-ups like IBM, Panasonic, ClimaCell and WeatherSTEM into the market (among others).

A quick browse of the job board Glassdoor shows a smaller mean salary than the BLS median. Their number of $62,992 is based on 180 salaries currently in its market database and includes the National Weather Service, military, broadcast sector and the private sector. For a current salary snapshot at Glassdoor, click this link and browse. Interestingly, Payscale has a different set of salary statistics. It is clear to me that the numbers will depend on the sample of jobs in the database of the specific provider. It is likely that the BLS database also includes academic or government type jobs that require advanced degrees, which may also explain its higher median salary.

OK, so let's get back to that RTDNA survey that prompted this blog. Bob Papper, Professor Emeritus - Hofstra University writes on the RTDNA website,

"This is the ninth of nine installments for this year in a series of reports developed from RTDNA's annual survey of newsrooms across the United States. Topics in the series were released every two weeks, including what's new online, social media and mobile strategies, television and radio budgets and profits, stations doing news, news director profiles, and our most popular areas of research; broadcast newsroom staffing, women and minorities in newsrooms, and newsroom salaries."

Overall, the RTDNA/Hofstra University found that salaries in local TV news increased by 4% in 2016 (down from 4.8% the previous year but double the 2.1% inflation rate). Though these numbers are positive, veteran colleagues in the industry have long described a downturn in salaries within the past five to 10 years. My instincts and experience tell me that there has been a calibration of news industry salaries downward over the past several decades as the TV and advertising industry adjusts to increasing competition from mobile and online content, the "cord-cutting movement" and other factors.

RTDNA and Hofstra University

The table above reveals the average "weathercaster" is still one of the highest paid positions in a newsroom with a mean (median) of $74,100 ($63,000). This is a clear example of how median and mean can differ as a function of outlier or extreme values. For example, the table also indicates that the range of salaries for weathercasters is $23,000 to $400,000. I have some friends in the business (you know who you are) that are certainly "north" of $400,000. This range also is a cautionary note that the TV industry is one that starts pretty low on the "salary and glamour" totem pole initially and will require steps from smaller markets to larger markets to advance in salary (see market table below). Last year, I documented inForbes that many young and mid-career TV meteorologists were getting out of the business due to salaries that were not consistent with increasing work responsibilities. Pay scales may also differ for broadcast companies that have a national market.

RTDNA and Hofstra University

There is a wealth of other information if you spend some time at the RDTNA-Hofstra website link above. I hope this was useful.

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Marshall Shepherd

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