Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians offer sit among all 343,040 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

BLS counted 343,040 Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians jobs in May 2024, which is 0.22% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Massachusetts, where the location quotient is 1.58, meaning the occupation holds 1.58 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 29,910 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 25.0% of the national total.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $97,990, which is 2.6 times the $38,020 at the 10th, a difference of $59,970 annually. Because the mean wage ($65,320) sits above the median ($61,890), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

New York posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $84,660, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians stands number 106 by employment and number 376 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 37% less than its group median, and it supplies 3.6% 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 $61,890, 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 18,920 jobs, 5.5% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Hattiesburg, MS posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $38,800 a year, against $93,170 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $61,890 works out to $5,158 a month before taxes, $2,380 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,190 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,580) to the 75th ($80,010) is worth $33,430 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $68,079 would sit between the median ($61,890) and the 75th percentile ($80,010), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,580, is $15,310 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Health Information Technologists and Medical Registrars, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Workers, All Other, Emergency Medicine Physicians, Healthcare Diagnosing or Treating Practitioners, All Other, Dietetic Technicians, Athletic Trainers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.