Athletic Trainers
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for athletic trainers is California, at $78,490. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and New Mexico comes out ahead, worth $63,674. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for athletic trainers: California leads at $78,490 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting New Mexico to $63,674 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$62,520
People doing it
30,500
Highest paid
$78,490
CA
Best off, really
$63,674
NM, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$48,180
Highest tenth
$88,760
Lowest, really
$42,111
AL
States with data
50
National average
$66,620
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.39%
NM, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $42,111 to $63,674. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Only 30,500 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $62,520 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. California leads the published set.
- Geographic dispersion in athletic trainers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $42,111 through $63,674. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- National employment in athletic trainers is 30,500. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- Coverage for athletic trainers runs to 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Athletic Trainers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $48,180 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,520 |
| Top tenth earn over | $88,760 |
| This salary | $62,520 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Athletic Trainers
The national median for this job
$62,520around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $48,180 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,520 |
| Top tenth | $88,760 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Athletic Trainers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Alabama · $46,940 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $78,490 |
| Spread | $31,550 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $64,150 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $66,015 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| NM | $72,440 | $57,553 | $63,674 |
| WY | $63,190 | $52,953 | $58,288 |
| LA | $62,760 | $51,111 | $57,854 |
| ND | $60,900 | $51,113 | $57,708 |
| SD | $58,620 | $49,281 | $55,941 |
| OK | $61,320 | $49,192 | $55,719 |
| TX | $64,150 | $53,725 | $55,286 |
| IN | $62,780 | $50,801 | $55,109 |
| OH | $61,420 | $50,558 | $55,067 |
| UT | $65,980 | $52,259 | $55,008 |
| NJ | $76,210 | $59,779 | $54,902 |
| NE | $61,020 | $49,137 | $54,369 |
| TN | $59,850 | $50,269 | $54,337 |
| KY | $60,680 | $48,930 | $54,086 |
| CA | $78,490 | $60,840 | $54,041 |
| AR | $57,240 | $46,513 | $53,767 |
| MT | $60,090 | $48,395 | $53,627 |
| HI | $76,320 | $58,164 | $53,554 |
| MS | $58,180 | $46,692 | $53,490 |
| WI | $61,820 | $49,637 | $53,318 |
| GA | $64,590 | $51,454 | $53,210 |
| CT | $69,960 | $54,949 | $52,994 |
| ID | $60,410 | $48,371 | $52,908 |
| MN | $65,390 | $51,798 | $52,631 |
| VT | $62,910 | $50,687 | $52,452 |
| DC | $74,450 | $57,813 | $52,176 |
| KS | $59,140 | $46,688 | $51,895 |
| NV | $59,820 | $50,245 | $51,810 |
| MO | $58,660 | $47,494 | $51,757 |
| IL | $64,750 | $51,146 | $51,739 |
| SC | $59,240 | $48,167 | $51,695 |
| CO | $64,580 | $51,937 | $51,229 |
| IA | $55,430 | $45,223 | $50,946 |
| MA | $70,010 | $54,902 | $50,723 |
| RI | $63,750 | $51,432 | $50,716 |
| PA | $61,060 | $49,367 | $50,633 |
| ME | $61,970 | $49,110 | $50,578 |
| MI | $59,280 | $47,543 | $50,479 |
| AZ | $61,710 | $50,624 | $50,070 |
| FL | $61,350 | $51,475 | $49,757 |
| WA | $63,750 | $53,403 | $49,191 |
| MD | $63,970 | $50,905 | $48,964 |
| VA | $61,860 | $49,088 | $48,723 |
| NC | $56,540 | $45,863 | $48,718 |
| NY | $66,230 | $52,416 | $48,702 |
| NH | $60,200 | $50,551 | $47,986 |
| DE | $59,650 | $47,365 | $47,722 |
| WV | $50,510 | $41,299 | $46,005 |
| OR | $57,790 | $44,108 | $42,119 |
| AL | $46,940 | $37,887 | $42,111 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for athletic trainers as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $62,520, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for athletic trainers, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is California, at $60,840.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for athletic trainers. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Alabama, on $42,111.
- These are distribution medians for athletic trainers, with a national value of $62,520. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for athletic trainers model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $60,840, which leads in California.
- Real-terms results for athletic trainers rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Alabama anchors the distribution at $42,111. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.