How much does an occupational health and safety specialists make?

The median occupational health and safety specialists salary in the United States is $90,150 per year ($43.34/hour). Salaries range from $55,000 (10th percentile) to $134,950 (90th percentile). There are 140,610 occupational health and safety specialists jobs in the U.S. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS.

Which state pays occupational health and safety specialistss the most?

The highest paying state for occupational health and safety specialistss is District of Columbia at $111,530 median salary.

Is occupational health and safety specialists a good career?

Occupational Health and Safety Specialists employment is projected to grow 12.5% from 2024 to 2034 (faster than average). There are approximately 14,900 job openings per year. Typical education required: Bachelor's degree.

What interview questions are asked for occupational health and safety specialists roles?

Common occupational health and safety specialists interview questions include: "Walk me through how you'd investigate a serious incident — a hand injury requiring 6 stitches on a maintenance mechanic.", "How do you get a resistant supervisor to actually run JSAs before every task?", "Tell me about a time your recommendation was ignored and something went wrong.". Interview format at top employers ranges from behavioral panels (STAR method) to technical case rounds — for example ExxonMobil + Chevron + Shell + BP (oil & gas majors) typically uses 5-6 rounds over 5-8 weeks.

What is the career ladder for occupational health and safety specialistss?

The typical occupational health and safety specialists career ladder: EHS Coordinator / Specialist I (0-3 yrs, $55,000-$72,000) → EHS Specialist II / Sr EHS Specialist (3-8 yrs, $75,000-$105,000) → Site EHS Manager / Sr Industrial Hygienist (7-15 yrs, $105,000-$134,950) → Regional / Business-Unit EHS Director (12-20 yrs, $155,000-$220,000 + bonus + LTIP).

What certifications should occupational health and safety specialistss get?

Top-ROI certifications for occupational health and safety specialistss: Certified Safety Professional (CSP) — BCSP ($160 application + $510 exam + $500-1,500 prep); Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH) — ABIH ($490 application + $675 exam + $800-2,500 prep); Associate Safety Professional (ASP) — BCSP ($160 application + $350 exam).

How do you negotiate a occupational health and safety specialists salary?

Anchor on documented market data (BLS median $90,150, p75 $111,690), specific outcomes you've delivered, and the specific band for your years of experience. Given 9 years across Chevron refinery PSM and Boeing final-assembly EHS, CIH + CSP + CHMM credentials, and a documented 3-year zero-SIF record with TRIR 0.42 at Boeing 787 Everett, market for a Site EHS Manager at a maj...

Occupational Health and Safety Specialists Salary

The median occupational health and safety specialists salary in the United States is $90,150 per year ($43.34/hour). Salaries range from $55,000 at the entry level to $134,950+ for the top 10% of earners. There are 140,610 occupational health and safety specialists jobs nationwide. Employment is projected to grow 12.5% through 2034.

Last updated: June 2026 · Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics

Median Salary

$90,150

per year

Hourly Rate

$43.34

per hour

Employment

140,610

jobs in the U.S.

Salary Distribution

10th percentile

$55,000

25th percentile

$69,560

Median

$90,150

75th percentile

$111,690

90th percentile

$134,950

Job Growth (2024-2034)

+12.5%

Faster than average

Annual Openings

14,900

jobs/year (growth + replacements)

Education Required

Bachelor's degree

Occupational Health and Safety Specialists Career Guide

Interview questions, resume templates, and a career ladder written specifically for occupational health and safety specialistss.

Occupational health and safety (EHS / HSE / OHS) specialists design, implement, and enforce the programs that keep workers alive on job sites and inside plants. Day-to-day: OSHA compliance auditing, incident investigation using root-cause frameworks (TapRooT, 5-Why, ICAM), industrial hygiene sampling, JSA / HAZID / HAZOP participation, and training. BLS median $90,150; entry (p10) $55,000; top (p90) $134,950; ~140,610 employed nationally. Oil & gas and heavy construction sit at the top of the pay band; healthcare and public-sector safety at the bottom. CIH, CSP, and CHMM credentials each move you $8-20k up-market.

Core Skills Hiring Managers Screen For

OSHA + agency regulatory fluency

29 CFR 1910 (General Industry), 1926 (Construction), 1904 (Recordkeeping). Plus MSHA for mining, DOT HazMat for transport, EPA RCRA / TSCA / CAA for environmental cross-over. Know the citation numbers cold — you'll cite them in every audit finding.

Incident investigation & root-cause analysis

TapRooT, ICAM, 5-Why, and Bowtie / barrier analysis. Move past 'the worker didn't follow procedure' to systemic causes — training gaps, procedure design, equipment failure modes. A weak RCA guarantees the incident repeats.

Industrial hygiene sampling

Air sampling (personal + area) for silica, benzene, H2S, noise dosimetry, and heat stress. Read NIOSH manuals, calibrate pumps, chain-of-custody to accredited labs. AIHA-accredited labs only — the wrong lab tanks your defensibility if a claim goes to court.

JSA / JHA / task-hazard analysis

Break work down into steps, identify hazards, define controls (hierarchy: eliminate → substitute → engineering → admin → PPE). Sign-offs by supervisor and lead worker before the task starts.

PSM / RMP process safety (if applicable)

29 CFR 1910.119 covers PSM for chemical plants and refineries; EPA RMP for offsite consequence. LOPA (Layers of Protection Analysis), PHA / HAZOP facilitation, MOC (Management of Change), and PSSR (Pre-Startup Safety Review). Non-negotiable at ExxonMobil, Chevron, Dow, and BASF.

Training design & delivery

OSHA 10 / 30, HAZWOPER 40, confined-space entry, LOTO authorized-employee, respiratory protection. Design against adult-learning principles (application + assessment, not death-by-PowerPoint). Track competency, not attendance.

Data & KPI tracking (TRIR, DART, LTIR)

Compute the standard OSHA rates correctly — recordables × 200,000 / total hours worked. Trend leading indicators (near-miss reporting rate, JSA compliance) not just lagging TRIR. Publish site-level dashboards monthly.

Emergency response & business continuity

ICS 100 / 200 / 700 / 800, emergency action plans, evacuation drills, mutual-aid agreements. If you're PSM-covered, integrated with the community and LEPC.

How to Become a Occupational Health and Safety Specialists

1
Earn a bachelor's in occupational safety, industrial hygiene, engineering, or environmental science
ABET-accredited safety programs (Indiana State, Central Washington, Millersville, Trine, Oakland CC, WVU Tech) are the classic path. Engineering degrees (chemical, mechanical, environmental) also open the door, especially for PSM-covered industries.
2
Get an entry-level HSE role — internship, coordinator, or field EHS
$55-72k entry. Titles: HSE Coordinator, EHS Specialist I, Safety Intern. Employers include ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell (rotational programs), Bechtel and Kiewit (large-project construction), Ford / GM / Boeing (manufacturing), HCA / Ascension (healthcare), and ERM / Ramboll / Trinity (consulting).
3
Get certified — GSP / OHST → CSP or CIH
Associate Safety Professional (ASP) or Occupational Hygienist and Safety Technologist (OHST) first (need 1-3 years experience). CSP requires bachelor's + 4 years EHS + passing exam. CIH requires bachelor's with 60 semester hours of relevant science + 4 years IH-focused work + passing exam. CIH pays the highest — $110-160k range for senior IHs at oil/gas majors.
4
Choose a vertical — oil/gas, construction, manufacturing, healthcare, or consulting
Oil/gas majors (Exxon, Chevron, Shell) pay top of market ($95-150k for senior EHS) but expect on-call, remote assignments, and PSM depth. Construction (Bechtel, Kiewit, Turner) pays $85-135k for project safety leads with heavy travel. Manufacturing (Ford, GM, Boeing) pays $80-125k with predictable hours. Healthcare (HCA, Ascension) pays $75-105k with less physical hazard exposure. Consulting (ERM, Ramboll, Trinity) pays $75-140k with variety and billable-hour pressure.
5
Advance to Sr EHS → EHS Manager → Director / VP EHS
Sr EHS specialists at $95-130k own site programs and lead investigations. EHS Managers at $115-165k own multi-site or a plant with 300-2,000 employees. Directors at $155-220k own a business unit; VPs at $210-350k+ own a Fortune 500 EHS function with equity.

Career Progression

EHS Coordinator / Specialist I

0-3 yrs$55,000-$72,000

•Support site-level compliance audits and inspections
•Deliver OSHA-required training (10 / 30, LOTO, confined space, respiratory)
•Assist with incident investigations and drive corrective actions to closure
•Maintain OSHA 300 log and support recordkeeping accuracy

Next: EHS Specialist II or Sr EHS Specialist at 3-5 years with GSP or ASP.

EHS Specialist II / Sr EHS Specialist

3-8 yrs$75,000-$105,000

•Own a program area (industrial hygiene, PSM, contractor safety, ergonomics)
•Facilitate PHAs, HAZOPs, MOCs, and PSSRs where PSM-covered
•Lead root-cause investigations on serious incidents (LOPC, near-miss potential SIF)
•Coach front-line supervisors on JSA quality and safety leadership

Next: Site EHS Manager or Sr Industrial Hygienist at 6-10 years with CSP or CIH.

Site EHS Manager / Sr Industrial Hygienist

7-15 yrs$105,000-$134,950

•Own EHS program for a plant, refinery unit, or construction project (300-2,000 employees)
•Manage 3-8 EHS professionals and $2-8M annual EHS budget
•Own regulatory relationships (OSHA area office, state agency, EPA region)
•Present monthly KPIs and incident trends to plant leadership

Next: Regional or Business-Unit EHS Director at 12-18 years.

Regional / Business-Unit EHS Director

12-20 yrs$155,000-$220,000 + bonus + LTIP

•Multi-site or business-unit EHS strategy and execution
•M&A EHS due diligence for the business unit
•Executive-level regulatory engagement (state OSHA, federal EPA)
•Culture change program ownership; publish annual sustainability / EHS report inputs

Next: VP EHS at 18-25 years.

VP EHS / Chief Safety Officer

18+ yrs$210,000-$350,000+ base + bonus + significant RSUs

•Enterprise EHS strategy, policy, and governance across all business units
•Board and CEO reporting on serious incidents, culture indicators, and sustainability commitments
•Represent the company externally with API, ACC, NSC, and government
•Chair the enterprise emergency response and crisis management structure

Next: Chief Sustainability Officer or non-executive board seat.

Interview Questions & Answers

5 free questions below. Career Kit unlocks 15 total plus resume bullets for every level.

Q1. Walk me through how you'd investigate a serious incident — a hand injury requiring 6 stitches on a maintenance mechanic.technical

Secure the scene first — preserve evidence, get the injured worker medical care, do NOT let anyone reset the equipment or clean up. Interview the injured worker and witnesses separately within 24 hours (memory decays fast). Pull the JSA, LOTO log, work order, and the last 6 months of similar tasks. Run root-cause using TapRooT or ICAM — get past the 'operator error' surface finding to systemic contributors (procedure design, training gaps, equipment guarding, time pressure). Build a corrective-action plan with SMART actions, named owners, and dates. Present findings to the site leadership team, get commitments in writing, and track to closure. Publish a lessons-learned to the other sites in the business unit within 30 days. Employer names like ExxonMobil, Chevron, Bechtel, and Kiewit all use variants of this framework — interviewers want to hear you know the difference between symptom and system.

Q2. How do you get a resistant supervisor to actually run JSAs before every task?situational

First understand why they're resistant — usually it's time pressure or 'we already know the hazards.' Sit with them on 3-5 tasks and run the JSA together at their pace. Show one hazard that gets missed without the JSA discipline (there's always one). Then work with their manager to protect JSA time in the schedule — 15 minutes per critical task is not optional. Publish weekly JSA compliance data at the crew level so supervisors see where they stand relative to peers. Recognize the crews that lead. If it's still not moving, it's a leadership problem, not a specialist problem — escalate with data. Employer culture varies: at Kiewit and Bechtel, JSAs are religion; at some legacy plants they've been treated as paperwork for 20 years and require real culture work.

Q3. Tell me about a time your recommendation was ignored and something went wrong.behavioral

STAR. Situation: I recommended a machine-guarding upgrade on a punch press at a Tier-1 auto supplier after a near-miss. Task: production leadership pushed back on the $28k spend and delayed 6 months. Action: I documented the near-miss, the recommendation, the delay in writing, and re-escalated to the plant manager and the corporate EHS director. Then a similar near-miss happened, and this time we got the spend approved same-week. Result: no serious injury, guarding installed, but the delay was the wrong outcome and I've never let a recommendation like that sit in silence again — every open finding now goes in a monthly report to the plant manager. Interviewers screen for you owning the outcome, not blaming the plant. They also want to hear the process change you made.

Q4. How do you compute TRIR and what's a meaningful improvement year over year?technical

TRIR = (OSHA-recordable injuries × 200,000) / total hours worked. 200,000 normalizes to 100 full-time-equivalent workers per year. A world-class TRIR at an oil/gas major or Bechtel-style construction runs 0.3-0.5; industry average in construction is 2.4; general industry ~2.7. A meaningful YoY improvement is usually 15-25% relative reduction — but I always push leadership to look at SIF (Serious Injury and Fatality) rate and precursor rate, because you can drive TRIR down 30% while your SIF exposure is unchanged. TRIR alone is a bad optimization target — the industry has moved to leading indicators (near-miss reporting rate, JSA quality audits, safety observations) because they predict SIFs better.

Q5. Why EHS and not another engineering / operations role?closer

The honest answer: I want a job where the work has direct human impact — the person going home to their kids depends on programs I own — and where I get to touch operations, engineering, HR, and legal in every serious investigation. EHS is one of the few roles where you can be an individual contributor with real influence on a plant manager or a project director. I also like the credential ladder (ASP → CSP → CIH) that rewards depth over years. In 5 years I want to be a CSP-certified Site EHS Manager at a top-tier oil/gas or construction company, and in 10 years running a regional program. Naming the fork and the target signals that you've thought about the trade.

Resume Template — EHS Coordinator / Specialist I (0-3 yrs)

Copy these bullets into your resume as a starting point. Career Kit includes bullets for every level of the ladder.

EHS Coordinator / Specialist I (0-3 yrs)

▸EHS Coordinator at Ford Motor Company's Dearborn Truck Plant (5,800 employees); supported OSHA compliance across body shop, paint, and general assembly.
▸Delivered OSHA 10, LOTO authorized-employee, and confined-space training to 720 hourly employees in first 18 months; 100% completion within federal deadlines.
▸Led 14 root-cause investigations under UAW-Ford EHS framework; closed 92% of corrective actions on-time (site average 74%).
▸GSP through BCSP; on track for CSP in Q2 2025. BS Occupational Safety, Indiana State University. $68k base + $6k bonus + full Ford benefits.

What Gets You Rejected

✗Blames workers for incidents — 'operator error' as a root cause is a career-ending flag at any serious EHS shop.
✗Cannot cite OSHA standards by number for the hazards in the role's industry (1910.147 LOTO, 1910.146 confined space, 1910.134 respiratory, 1926.501 fall protection, 1910.119 PSM).
✗Weak numeracy — cannot compute TRIR, cannot read a dosimetry result, cannot interpret an IH sampling report.
✗No credential progress — 4 years in and no ASP / GSP scheduled screens as unserious.
✗Confrontational or punitive posture with operations leadership — EHS needs influence, not compliance-cop stance.
✗No fluency in ICS or emergency response basics — every real EHS role has an incident-command dimension.
✗Cannot facilitate a PHA / HAZOP for PSM-covered roles — knockout at ExxonMobil, Chevron, Shell.

Salary Negotiation Levers

✓Credentials — CSP adds $10-18k; CIH adds $12-25k; CHMM adds $6-12k. Time these to negotiation windows.
✓Vertical premium — oil/gas + heavy construction pay 20-35% over healthcare + public sector at the same experience level.
✓PSM depth — if you can facilitate PHAs and HAZOPs, oil/gas and chemical majors will pay a $8-15k premium.
✓Rotational / offshore / remote assignments — Alaska North Slope, offshore Gulf, LNG terminal construction all carry 20-40% premium plus per diem.
✓Consulting vs industry — consulting (ERM, Ramboll, Trinity, Antea Group) pays 5-15% higher base but bills hours; industry pays lower base with better bonus and benefits.
✓Bilingual EHS professionals (Spanish especially) command a $5-10k premium in construction and food/ag industries.
✓Certification reimbursement + exam prep + membership dues (AIHA, ASSP, BCSP) are standard asks and add $2-4k/year in effective compensation.

Occupational Health and Safety Specialists Resume Review — $29

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Occupational Health and Safety Specialists Salary by State

Best Cities (cost-adjusted) →

Salary Map — Click a state for details

$73K

$112K■ No data

Top Paying States

Vertical line = national median. Click a state for full details.

State	Median	vs. National	Employment
District of Columbia	$111,530	+23.7%	280
Massachusetts	$103,970	+15.3%	3,390
Washington	$102,920	+14.2%	3,570
California	$102,840	+14.1%	16,230
Rhode Island	$101,740	+12.9%	200
Colorado	$101,400	+12.5%	3,080
New Hampshire	$101,260	+12.3%	610
Alaska	$99,270	+10.1%	370
Illinois	$98,270	+9.0%	2,900
Maine	$97,640	+8.3%	600

Showing 1–10 of 51

Occupational Health and Safety Specialists Salary by Metro Area

Metro Area	Median	vs. National
San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA	$128,980	+43.1%
San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA	$126,860	+40.7%
Kennewick-Richland, WA	$125,970	+39.7%
Niles, MI	$113,680	+26.1%
Lawrence, KS	$109,740	+21.7%
Napa, CA	$109,560	+21.5%
Vallejo, CA	$109,550	+21.5%
Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA	$109,500	+21.5%
Pueblo, CO	$109,390	+21.3%
Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV	$109,170	+21.1%

Showing 1–10 of 370

Data Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS). Data reflects the most recent annual survey.

How does this compare to pro athletes?

A occupational health and safety specialists earning $90,150/year would need 661 years to match Stephen Curry's NBA salary, or 710 yearsto match Patrick Mahomes' NFL contract.

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📈 See how occupational health and safety specialists salaries have changed over the past decade.

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