Nuclear Medicine Technologists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Nuclear Medicine Technologists ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $83,020. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 16,960, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. Florida leads the state table with 1,740 jobs; the top three states sum to 24.5% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: South Dakota posts a location quotient of 3.28, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $52,520 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($128,090) is 1.7 times the 10th percentile ($75,570), a gap of $52,520 a year. The mean of $99,690 sitting above the median of $97,020 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $155,220, and Florida the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Nuclear Medicine Technologists stands number 588 by employment and number 141 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 1% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 21 of the 48 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $97,020, 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 1,050 jobs, 6.2% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $94,280 a year, against $116,140 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $97,020 works out to $8,085 a month before taxes, $3,732 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,866 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($83,020) to the 75th ($108,190) is worth $25,170 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 $106,722 would sit between the median ($97,020) and the 75th percentile ($108,190), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $83,020, is $14,000 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: Anesthesiologists, Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists, Chiropractors, Health Information Technologists and Medical Registrars, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Workers, All Other, Emergency Medicine Physicians. The full directory is on the Careers hub.