Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians worker at that point in the distribution, so $45,410 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

BLS counted 18,740 Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians jobs in May 2024, which is 0.01% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Minnesota, where the location quotient is 2.87, meaning the occupation holds 2.87 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 3,650 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 36.8% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $35,580 at the 25th percentile, $38,420 at the middle, $45,410 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $24,230, a ratio of 1.8 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians runs from the $60,700 median in Connecticut down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (3,650 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Ophthalmic Laboratory Technicians stands number 574 by employment and number 730 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Production Occupations, the group median wage is $46,020 across 105 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 17% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 8,743,430 jobs. In 19 of the 39 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,420, 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

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX is the largest metro employer with 2,310 jobs, 12.3% 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, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $37,840 a year, against $57,940 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,202 a month before tax, $1,478 biweekly, $739 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($35,580) to the 75th ($45,410) is worth $9,830 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 $42,262 would sit between the median ($38,420) and the 75th percentile ($45,410), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $35,580, is $2,840 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Production Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Packaging and Filling Machine Operators and Tenders, Machinists, Production Workers, All Other, Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical Assemblers, Except Coil Winders, Tapers, and Finishers, Bakers, Laundry and Dry-Cleaning Workers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.