Medical Records Specialists
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays medical records specialists the most, $72,040. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Wisconsin wins, at $52,087. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For medical records specialists, the District of Columbia leads both nominally at $72,040 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Wisconsin first at $52,087. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
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
$51,140
People doing it
194,720
Highest paid
$72,040
DC
Best off, really
$52,087
WI, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,000
Highest tenth
$81,150
Lowest, really
$37,649
FL
States with data
51
National average
$56,790
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
93.1%
WI, 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 $37,649 to $52,087. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Roughly 194,720 people hold this job nationally, earning $51,140 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $51,140. Nothing is missing.
- Geographic dispersion in medical records specialists is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $37,649 through $52,087. 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.
- 194,720 are employed nationally in medical records specialists, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for medical records specialists is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Medical Records Specialists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,000 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $51,140 |
| Top tenth earn over | $81,150 |
| This salary | $51,140 |
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 Medical Records Specialists
The national median for this job
$51,140around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,000 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $51,140 |
| Top tenth | $81,150 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Medical Records Specialists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $41,500 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $72,040 |
| Spread | $30,540 |
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 | $48,860 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $50,280 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WI | $60,280 | $48,491 | $52,087 |
| NM | $57,470 | $46,822 | $51,802 |
| RI | $63,960 | $51,593 | $50,875 |
| DC | $72,040 | $56,274 | $50,787 |
| AK | $61,090 | $51,266 | $50,401 |
| WY | $54,210 | $45,738 | $50,345 |
| MN | $61,530 | $48,959 | $49,746 |
| SD | $51,610 | $43,649 | $49,547 |
| OK | $53,460 | $43,230 | $48,966 |
| VT | $57,560 | $46,741 | $48,369 |
| WA | $62,270 | $52,214 | $48,096 |
| SC | $54,280 | $44,511 | $47,770 |
| ID | $53,460 | $43,155 | $47,203 |
| CO | $59,020 | $47,714 | $47,064 |
| CT | $60,940 | $48,544 | $46,817 |
| IA | $50,640 | $41,557 | $46,816 |
| NE | $51,670 | $42,049 | $46,527 |
| OH | $50,990 | $42,465 | $46,252 |
| HI | $63,180 | $49,587 | $45,656 |
| NY | $61,720 | $49,036 | $45,562 |
| IL | $56,440 | $44,881 | $45,400 |
| MT | $50,190 | $40,905 | $45,328 |
| MO | $50,750 | $41,510 | $45,236 |
| DE | $56,060 | $44,680 | $45,016 |
| TN | $48,780 | $41,375 | $44,722 |
| UT | $52,870 | $42,308 | $44,534 |
| ND | $46,280 | $39,366 | $44,445 |
| CA | $61,810 | $49,943 | $44,362 |
| MA | $60,350 | $47,974 | $44,322 |
| NV | $50,300 | $42,596 | $43,923 |
| KY | $48,410 | $39,501 | $43,663 |
| WV | $47,360 | $38,901 | $43,333 |
| NC | $49,620 | $40,579 | $43,105 |
| ME | $52,090 | $41,838 | $43,089 |
| GA | $51,550 | $41,627 | $43,048 |
| OR | $59,000 | $44,974 | $42,947 |
| KS | $48,160 | $38,478 | $42,770 |
| TX | $48,860 | $41,439 | $42,644 |
| IN | $47,670 | $39,106 | $42,422 |
| VA | $53,290 | $42,695 | $42,378 |
| LA | $44,610 | $37,072 | $41,963 |
| MD | $54,220 | $43,534 | $41,874 |
| MI | $48,120 | $39,050 | $41,461 |
| AR | $41,740 | $34,632 | $40,034 |
| NH | $49,210 | $41,720 | $39,603 |
| AL | $43,810 | $35,510 | $39,468 |
| PA | $46,840 | $38,378 | $39,362 |
| AZ | $47,630 | $39,662 | $39,229 |
| MS | $41,500 | $33,957 | $38,901 |
| NJ | $50,240 | $41,320 | $37,949 |
| FL | $45,760 | $38,948 | $37,649 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for medical records specialists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $51,140, 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 medical records specialists 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 the District of Columbia, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $56,274.
- The price adjustment for medical records specialists 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 — Florida anchors the bottom at $37,649. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for medical records specialists, with a national value of $51,140. 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 medical records specialists 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 $56,274, in the District of Columbia. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms figures for medical records specialists 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.