Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians
What the pay figures show
- New York pays this job the most, at $97,280. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $67,425 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- New York leads for clinical laboratory technologists and technicians at $97,280 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $67,425 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
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
$62,930
People doing it
332,940
Highest paid
$97,280
NY
Best off, really
$67,425
NY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,910
Highest tenth
$100,990
Lowest, really
$41,514
UT
States with data
51
National average
$67,350
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
107.63%
NY, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $41,514 up to $67,425.
- 332,940 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $62,930. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $62,930. Nothing is missing.
- The nominal spread for clinical laboratory technologists and technicians approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $41,514 to $67,425, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in clinical laboratory technologists and technicians is 332,940 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- Coverage for clinical laboratory technologists and technicians is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,910 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $62,930 |
| Top tenth earn over | $100,990 |
| This salary | $62,930 |
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 Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians
The national median for this job
$62,930around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,910 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $62,930 |
| Top tenth | $100,990 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | New Mexico · $47,360 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New York · $97,280 |
| Spread | $49,920 |
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 | $59,290 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,014 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NY | $97,280 | $72,567 | $67,425 |
| VT | $78,680 | $61,099 | $63,226 |
| NH | $81,020 | $65,828 | $62,488 |
| WY | $65,510 | $54,817 | $60,340 |
| ND | $62,680 | $52,543 | $59,323 |
| RI | $75,780 | $59,719 | $58,888 |
| MN | $74,440 | $57,660 | $58,587 |
| SD | $60,890 | $51,105 | $58,011 |
| MT | $65,190 | $52,238 | $57,885 |
| OR | $83,010 | $60,514 | $57,786 |
| OH | $63,800 | $52,405 | $57,079 |
| IL | $71,950 | $56,030 | $56,679 |
| TN | $62,070 | $52,053 | $56,265 |
| MA | $79,120 | $60,855 | $56,223 |
| WV | $61,810 | $49,902 | $55,587 |
| ME | $68,690 | $53,837 | $55,446 |
| WA | $72,760 | $60,017 | $55,283 |
| CO | $70,050 | $55,736 | $54,977 |
| KS | $62,050 | $48,863 | $54,314 |
| KY | $60,880 | $49,084 | $54,256 |
| DE | $68,630 | $53,813 | $54,218 |
| NE | $60,540 | $48,773 | $53,967 |
| DC | $76,560 | $59,151 | $53,383 |
| MO | $60,300 | $48,734 | $53,109 |
| CA | $76,010 | $59,295 | $52,668 |
| WI | $60,670 | $48,781 | $52,398 |
| MI | $61,260 | $49,050 | $52,078 |
| NC | $60,650 | $49,001 | $52,052 |
| GA | $62,180 | $49,638 | $51,332 |
| TX | $59,290 | $49,820 | $51,268 |
| AZ | $62,530 | $51,262 | $50,702 |
| LA | $54,460 | $44,691 | $50,587 |
| IN | $57,080 | $46,389 | $50,323 |
| AK | $60,950 | $51,153 | $50,291 |
| NJ | $68,450 | $54,750 | $50,284 |
| CT | $65,310 | $51,815 | $49,971 |
| IA | $54,260 | $44,328 | $49,937 |
| NV | $57,320 | $48,237 | $49,739 |
| FL | $60,510 | $50,800 | $49,105 |
| OK | $53,300 | $43,109 | $48,828 |
| MD | $63,690 | $50,693 | $48,760 |
| SC | $55,280 | $45,248 | $48,562 |
| VA | $61,050 | $48,484 | $48,123 |
| HI | $66,020 | $51,653 | $47,558 |
| AR | $49,670 | $40,711 | $47,060 |
| MS | $50,640 | $40,936 | $46,895 |
| AL | $49,440 | $39,786 | $44,221 |
| NM | $47,360 | $39,165 | $43,330 |
| PA | $51,680 | $42,118 | $43,198 |
| ID | $47,450 | $38,645 | $42,269 |
| UT | $49,090 | $39,439 | $41,514 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $62,930, 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 this job, 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 New York, at $72,567.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Utah anchors the bottom at $41,514. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for clinical laboratory technologists and technicians, with a national value of $62,930. 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 clinical laboratory technologists and technicians 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 $72,567, which leads in New York.
- Real-terms figures for clinical laboratory technologists and technicians deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.