Orthotists and Prosthetists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Orthotists and Prosthetists worker at that point in the distribution, so $98,880 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

May 2024 employment stood at 9,930, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 1,370 jobs; the top three states sum to 24.2% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: New Hampshire posts a location quotient of 4.13, 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: $72,510 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($118,730) is 2.6 times the 10th percentile ($46,220), a gap of $72,510 a year. The mean of $81,330 sitting above the median of $78,310 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 45 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is New Jersey at $110,760; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Orthotists and Prosthetists stands number 688 by employment and number 223 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 20% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 24 of the 45 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $78,310, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 500 jobs, 5.0% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 63 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, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $93,210 a year, against $93,210 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. 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

The median annual wage of $78,310 works out to $6,526 a month before taxes, $3,012 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,506 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($59,990) to the 75th ($98,880) is worth $38,890 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 $86,141 would sit between the median ($78,310) and the 75th percentile ($98,880), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $59,990, is $18,320 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

Sibling occupations in Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations: Opticians, Dispensing, Dietitians and Nutritionists, Ophthalmic Medical Technicians, General Internal Medicine Physicians, Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians, Nurse Anesthetists. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.