Sociology & Anthropology

Studying how people live together—cultures, communities, families, crime, aging, and inequality—often by going out and talking to people.

Top pay: highest pay, longest training

• Business / Corporate Anthropologist: Uses anthropology to help companies understand how people really live and use products. Typical pay $115k.

Mid pay: solid pay, degree or apprenticeship

• Sociologist: Studies how groups, institutions, and societies work—families, schools, neighborhoods, inequality. Typical pay $102k.
• Cultural Anthropologist: Studies cultures by living among and learning from the people in them. Typical pay $65k.
• Sociology Professor: Teaches college sociology and researches social problems. Typical pay $85k.
• Anthropology Professor: Teaches college anthropology and leads research on cultures, human evolution, or archaeology. Typical pay $90k.
• Ethnomusicologist: Studies music in its cultural context—why people make music and what it means to them. Typical pay $70k.
• Criminologist: Studies crime—why it happens and which policies actually reduce it. Typical pay $90k.
• Medical Anthropologist: Studies how culture shapes health, illness, and medical care. Typical pay $75k.
• Program Evaluator: Measures whether social programs—like tutoring or job training—actually work. Typical pay $82k.
• Policy Research Associate (Think Tank): Researches social issues like housing, education, or immigration for think tanks. Typical pay $65k.
• Social Network Analyst: Maps relationships between people or organizations to understand influence, spread of ideas, or fraud. Typical pay $100k.
• Gerontologist: Studies aging and helps design services and policies for older adults. Typical pay $72k.
• Folklorist: Documents and celebrates traditional stories, crafts, music, and customs of communities. Typical pay $58k.
• Visual Anthropologist: Uses film and photography to document and study cultures. Typical pay $58k.
• Cultural Center Program Coordinator: Plans festivals, classes, and exhibits that celebrate a community's culture and heritage. Typical pay $57k.
• Applied Sociologist: Uses sociology research skills outside academia to help nonprofits, hospitals, and governments solve social problems. Typical pay $72k.
• Intercultural Trainer: Prepares employees and families moving abroad, or welcoming foreign colleagues, to handle culture shock, business customs and everyday life. Typical pay $70k.
• Extremism Researcher: Studies hate groups and violent movements, tracking their online chatter and recruiting so communities, platforms and police can stop attacks. Typical pay $78k.

Starter: fastest way in

• Social Science Research Assistant: Helps social scientists with surveys, interviews, and data. Typical pay $54k.
• Qualitative Field Interviewer: Conducts in-depth interviews for research studies. Typical pay $42k.
• Community Organizer: Brings neighbors together to tackle local problems—from unsafe streets to school funding. Typical pay $48k.
• Social Science Content Coder: Reads interviews, news articles, or social media posts and tags them by theme so researchers can study patterns. Typical pay $46k.
• Tribal Enrollment Officer: Keeps a Native nation's membership rolls, checking family trees and records to decide who qualifies as a citizen of the tribe. Typical pay $48k.

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.