Psychiatric Technicians 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 ($32,980) to the 90th ($60,150). 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 136,300 people in May 2024, 0.09% of every job BLS counted. Florida is the largest employer at 14,080 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 25.3% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Hawaii, whose location quotient of 2.98 says this work is 2.98 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

One in ten workers in this field earns $32,980 or less, and one in ten earns $60,150 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $27,170. The mean ($45,000) versus median ($42,590) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

District of Columbia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $65,060, and Florida the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Psychiatric Technicians stands number 223 by employment and number 666 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 57% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.4% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 23 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $42,590, 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

Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ is the largest metro employer with 6,000 jobs, 4.4% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 219 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, Baton Rouge, LA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $30,850 a year, against $72,610 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,549 a month before tax, $1,638 biweekly, $819 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($37,170) to the 75th ($48,910) is worth $11,740 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 $46,849 would sit between the median ($42,590) and the 75th percentile ($48,910), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $37,170, is $5,420 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: Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric, Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric, Physicians, Pathologists, Hearing Aid Specialists, Dermatologists, Orthotists and Prosthetists. The full directory is on the Careers hub.