Phlebotomists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($34,860) to the 90th ($57,750). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 138,880 people in May 2024, 0.09% of every job BLS counted. Texas is the largest employer at 13,410 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 26.2% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in West Virginia, whose location quotient of 1.99 says this work is 1.99 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $57,750, which is 1.7 times the $34,860 at the 10th, a difference of $22,890 annually. Because the mean wage ($44,390) sits above the median ($43,660), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Phlebotomists runs from the $55,460 median in California down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Texas (13,410 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Phlebotomists stands number 218 by employment and number 657 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Healthcare Support Occupations, the group median wage is $41,590 across 17 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 5% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.9% of the group's 7,448,000 jobs. In 21 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $43,660, 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 5,760 jobs, 4.1% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $27,480 a year, against $60,580 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, 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: $3,638 a month before tax, $1,679 biweekly, $840 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($37,540) to the 75th ($48,170) is worth $10,630 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 $48,026 would sit between the median ($43,660) and the 75th percentile ($48,170), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $37,540, is $6,120 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 Support Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Healthcare Support Workers, All Other, Massage Therapists, Medical Equipment Preparers, Orderlies, Occupational Therapy Assistants, Physical Therapist Aides. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.