How hard is it to hire for CEQA/NEPA?
Talent in this discipline is scarce nationally. Expect long searches, competitive offers, and thin candidate pools.
Why the verdict sits above the raw federal data
Federal occupation data alone reads moderately hard to hire; a documented industry floor lifts it to hard to hire.
CEQA/NEPA permitting specialists with senior California or federal regulatory experience are a tight specialty within the broader Urban Planners + Environmental Scientists occupations.
Source: Industry floor
The numbers behind it
CEQA/NEPA maps to 2 federal occupations in the BLS taxonomy (OEWS, 2025 annual release). When a discipline blends several occupations, the most scarce one sets the verdict.
| BLS occupation | Median wage | US employment | Band |
|---|---|---|---|
| Urban and Regional Planners (19-3051) | $94,750 | 44,230 | Moderately hard to hire |
| Environmental Scientists and Specialists (19-2041) | $91,680 | 89,250 | Generally available |
What this means for your firm
Before opening a CEQA/NEPA search, it is worth knowing whether the capability already exists on your bench. Firms often hold the credential or the near-adjacent experience internally, and a reallocation or a targeted cross-training move is faster and cheaper than a scarce-market hire. Atlas builds that picture: a digital twin of your firm's people, credentials, capacity, and utilization, compared against the work in front of you.
Other disciplines banded hard to hire
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (2025 annual release). Bands compare occupations within the AEC cohort; industry floors and expert curation are labeled where applied. Descriptive labor-market statistics only; nothing on this page predicts any individual's behavior.