Surgical Technologists 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 ($43,290) to the 90th ($90,700). 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 113,890 people in May 2024, 0.07% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 10,570 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 25.5% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in South Dakota, whose location quotient of 1.74 says this work is 1.74 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $90,700, which is 2.1 times the $43,290 at the 10th, a difference of $47,410 annually. Because the mean wage ($65,810) sits above the median ($62,830), 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 Surgical Technologists runs from the $81,120 median in California down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (10,570 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Surgical Technologists stands number 245 by employment and number 362 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 36% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.2% 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 $62,830, 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 5,730 jobs, 5.0% 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, $28,940 a year, against $102,930 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, 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

As a household number, $62,830 a year is $5,236 a month gross, $2,417 every two weeks, $1,208 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($51,740) to the 75th ($77,140) is worth $25,400 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 $5,236 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 $69,113 would sit between the median ($62,830) and the 75th percentile ($77,140), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $51,740, is $11,090 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Recreational Therapists, Audiologists, Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric, Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric, Physicians, Pathologists, Hearing Aid Specialists. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.