Radiation Therapists 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 Radiation Therapists ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $86,520. 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

With 18,700 jobs nationally, Radiation Therapists make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: Texas alone holds 1,440 of those jobs, the top three states hold 21.8%, and the deepest concentration sits in Vermont (location quotient 1.65, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $141,550, which is 1.8 times the $77,860 at the 10th, a difference of $63,690 annually. Because the mean wage ($110,820) sits above the median ($101,990), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $160,040, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Radiation Therapists stands number 576 by employment and number 112 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 4% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 16 of the 47 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $101,990, 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 1,200 jobs, 6.4% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 77 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, Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $113,100 a year, against $142,900 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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

As a household number, $101,990 a year is $8,499 a month gross, $3,923 every two weeks, $1,961 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($86,520) to the 75th ($120,360) is worth $33,840 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $8,499 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $112,189 would sit between the median ($101,990) and the 75th percentile ($120,360), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $86,520, is $15,470 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: Dietitians and Nutritionists, Ophthalmic Medical Technicians, General Internal Medicine Physicians, Cardiovascular Technologists and Technicians, Nurse Anesthetists, Pediatricians, General. The full directory is on the Careers hub.