Also called: Fragrance Creator, 'The Nose'
Invents new scents for perfumes, soaps, candles, and laundry detergent.
A perfumer sits at an 'organ' of hundreds of tiny bottles, smelling paper strips and writing formulas with dozens of ingredients. They might work on a luxury perfume one week and a shampoo the next, revising a formula 100+ times to get it right. Major fragrance houses in New York and New Jersey hire perfumers.
Estimate; senior perfumers at major houses earn well above $200k.
Approximate: anchored on Bureau of Labor Statistics data for a broader job group.
Bachelor's degree (4-year), about 10 years after high school. Often a chemistry degree, then a 3-10 year in-house training program at a fragrance house (e.g., Givaudan, IFF, Firmenich) or perfumery school. Only a few hundred perfumers exist worldwide.
Ways in: 4-year college, Apprenticeship, Graduate school. Training cost: $15k – $60k.
Majors to look at: Chemistry, Biochemistry, Chemical Engineering.
Growing slowly. Tiny, competitive field.
Low risk in 5 years, medium in 10. Fragrance houses now use AI to propose formulas and predict how scents read, so fewer trainee seats; the trained nose and final creative call stay human.
Classes: AP Chemistry, Biology, Art, French.
Official data: O*NET occupation 19-2031.
Career Universe is an early version. Pay, training and AI-risk figures are estimates to start your own research, not verified facts. The research was written with AI research assistants, checked by validation scripts and spot-checked by hand. Check anything important with schools, employers and official sources. How the numbers work.