Opticians, Dispensing 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 Opticians, Dispensing ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $37,900. 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

BLS counted 79,690 Opticians, Dispensing jobs in May 2024, which is 0.05% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Nevada, where the location quotient is 1.82, meaning the occupation holds 1.82 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 8,180 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 25.7% of the national total.

One in ten workers in this field earns $34,470 or less, and one in ten earns $73,240 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.1 to 1 and the annual gap is $38,770. The mean ($49,970) versus median ($46,560) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

New Jersey posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $66,250, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Opticians, Dispensing stands number 305 by employment and number 609 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 53% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.8% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 22 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $46,560, 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 5,170 jobs, 6.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 325 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $30,420 a year, against $65,980 in Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,880 a month before tax, $1,791 biweekly, $895 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($37,900) to the 75th ($59,680) is worth $21,780 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 $51,216 would sit between the median ($46,560) and the 75th percentile ($59,680), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $37,900, 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

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Neurologists, Dentists, All Other Specialists, Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons, Orthodontists, Medical Dosimetrists, Genetic Counselors. The full directory is on the Careers hub.