Emergency Medical Technicians
What the pay figures show
- Hawaii pays this job the most, at $66,410. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $47,820 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Hawaii leads for emergency medical technicians at $66,410 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $47,820 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$44,470
People doing it
180,510
Highest paid
$66,410
HI
Best off, really
$47,820
HI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$34,130
Highest tenth
$62,500
Lowest, really
$32,218
WV
States with data
51
National average
$46,830
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.61%
HI, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $32,218 to $47,820.
- Roughly 180,510 people hold this job nationally, earning $44,470 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $44,470. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in emergency medical technicians is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $32,218 to $47,820 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 180,510 are employed nationally in emergency medical technicians, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for emergency medical technicians is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Emergency Medical Technicians
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $34,130 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $44,470 |
| Top tenth earn over | $62,500 |
| This salary | $44,470 |
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 Emergency Medical Technicians
The national median for this job
$44,470around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $34,130 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $44,470 |
| Top tenth | $62,500 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Emergency Medical Technicians, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $34,170 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $66,410 |
| Spread | $32,240 |
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 | $37,260 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $38,343 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| HI | $66,410 | $51,936 | $47,820 |
| AK | $57,440 | $48,333 | $47,518 |
| WY | $47,070 | $40,001 | $44,030 |
| RI | $51,290 | $41,888 | $41,305 |
| WA | $52,690 | $44,516 | $41,006 |
| NJ | $53,610 | $43,841 | $40,265 |
| MN | $48,090 | $39,066 | $39,694 |
| CT | $50,640 | $40,834 | $39,381 |
| VT | $45,600 | $37,548 | $38,856 |
| NC | $44,250 | $36,478 | $38,749 |
| ME | $46,340 | $37,606 | $38,731 |
| ND | $39,670 | $34,055 | $38,449 |
| GA | $45,550 | $37,105 | $38,372 |
| IN | $42,740 | $35,290 | $38,282 |
| IA | $40,660 | $33,917 | $38,209 |
| NE | $41,710 | $34,500 | $38,174 |
| MO | $42,160 | $35,011 | $38,155 |
| WI | $43,060 | $35,509 | $38,142 |
| DE | $46,790 | $37,746 | $38,030 |
| NH | $46,790 | $39,776 | $37,758 |
| MD | $48,100 | $38,907 | $37,423 |
| TN | $40,330 | $34,585 | $37,383 |
| MA | $50,230 | $40,348 | $37,277 |
| OH | $40,220 | $34,107 | $37,149 |
| CO | $45,750 | $37,636 | $37,122 |
| SC | $40,370 | $34,110 | $36,608 |
| PA | $43,310 | $35,650 | $36,564 |
| VA | $45,420 | $36,824 | $36,550 |
| OR | $49,270 | $38,008 | $36,294 |
| NY | $48,400 | $39,053 | $36,286 |
| SD | $36,800 | $31,749 | $36,039 |
| ID | $38,840 | $32,183 | $35,201 |
| AR | $36,230 | $30,409 | $35,152 |
| NM | $37,550 | $31,704 | $35,076 |
| MI | $39,870 | $32,772 | $34,796 |
| MS | $36,630 | $30,239 | $34,641 |
| IL | $42,260 | $34,189 | $34,585 |
| AL | $37,810 | $30,953 | $34,403 |
| DC | $46,650 | $38,030 | $34,322 |
| LA | $35,870 | $30,312 | $34,311 |
| CA | $46,380 | $38,455 | $34,158 |
| KY | $36,800 | $30,578 | $33,800 |
| MT | $36,140 | $30,277 | $33,550 |
| UT | $38,930 | $31,728 | $33,397 |
| NV | $37,560 | $32,359 | $33,367 |
| FL | $39,870 | $34,216 | $33,074 |
| TX | $37,260 | $32,118 | $33,052 |
| AZ | $39,500 | $33,333 | $32,969 |
| KS | $35,780 | $29,221 | $32,481 |
| OK | $34,170 | $28,598 | $32,393 |
| WV | $34,360 | $28,923 | $32,218 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $44,470, 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.
- Take-home figures for this job assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Hawaii, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $51,936.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — West Virginia sits at the bottom on $32,218.
- These are distribution medians for emergency medical technicians, with a national value of $44,470. 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.
- Take-home calculations for emergency medical technicians assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $51,936, in Hawaii. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to emergency medical technicians uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is West Virginia at $32,218. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $32,218 — and the two source series are dated independently.