Salary

• Quality Progress reports that as of 2010, full-time quality professionals earned an average salary of $92,657 a year, while part-time professionals earned an average of $57,845. Self-employed quality consultants earned an average of $114,654 a year, and those who worked both as self-employed consultants in addition to a full or part-time position earned an average of $138,907 a year.
  
  

Education

• There is no standard education requirement for quality consultants, but those with a higher education tend to earn higher salaries. According to Quality Progress, a quality consultant with a high school diploma earned an average salary of $71,719 as of 2010, while one with a degree from a vocational or technical school earned an average of $88,934. An associate's degree helped consultants bring in an average of $76,862 a year, and a bachelor's degree led to an average of $93,028. Quality consultants with a master's degree earned an average of $109,544 annually, and those with a doctorate earned an average of $131,441.
  
  

Gender and Experience

• Overall, male quality consultants earn significantly higher salaries than female consultants. Quality Progress reports that in 2010 the average income of a male quality consultant was $99,513, while females earned an average of $87,205. Some of this difference is because male consultants have more experience than females; however, even in direct comparison wages remain unbalanced. For example, male quality consultants with between 10 and 20 years of experience had over $6,000 of a difference in earnings, while female consultants with the same level of experience had less than $4,000 difference.
  
  

Supervisors

• Some quality consultants have a supervisory role over a team of consultants or other workers, a factor which tends to lead to higher wages. Quality Progress reports that the average salary of a quality consultant who does not supervise other workers was just above $80,000 as of 2010, while a consultant who supervised three to five workers earned between $90,000 and $100,000 a year. A quality consultant who supervised a large team of between 31 and 50 workers earned over $120,000 a year on average.