Athletic Trainers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Athletic Trainers worker at that point in the distribution, so $70,880 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 28,950 people in May 2024, 0.02% of every job BLS counted. Pennsylvania is the largest employer at 2,310 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 21.1% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Vermont, whose location quotient of 2.96 says this work is 2.96 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $38,720 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($84,100) is 1.9 times the 10th percentile ($45,380), a gap of $38,720 a year. The mean of $63,960 sitting above the median of $60,250 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Athletic Trainers runs from the $77,350 median in New Jersey down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Pennsylvania (2,310 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Athletic Trainers stands number 487 by employment and number 408 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, the group median wage is $98,340 across 71 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 39% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 25 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $60,250, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,100 jobs, 3.8% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $63,360 a year, against $80,250 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $5,021 a month before tax, $2,317 biweekly, $1,159 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($51,590) to the 75th ($70,880) is worth $19,290 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $66,275 would sit between the median ($60,250) and the 75th percentile ($70,880), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $51,590, is $8,660 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Medical Records Specialists, Speech-Language Pathologists, Emergency Medical Technicians, Health Technologists and Technicians, All Other, Physician Assistants, Occupational Therapists. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.