Medical Transcriptionists
What the pay figures show
- Where are medical transcriptionists paid best? Minnesota, at $50,030. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Alaska is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Wyoming wins — the money there behaves like $44,941. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for medical transcriptionists is Minnesota at $50,030, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Alaska; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Wyoming at $44,941 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
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
$40,410
People doing it
41,550
Highest paid
$50,030
MN
Best off, really
$44,941
WY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$28,250
Highest tenth
$55,950
Lowest, really
$24,948
GA
States with data
50
National average
$41,710
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
90.85%
WY, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $24,948 and $44,941. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- This is a small job: about 41,550 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $40,410 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Minnesota tops the ones that are.
- Wages for medical transcriptionists cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $24,948 to $44,941. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- With 41,550 workers, medical transcriptionists is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for medical transcriptionists. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Medical Transcriptionists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $28,250 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $40,410 |
| Top tenth earn over | $55,950 |
| This salary | $40,410 |
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 Transcriptionists
The national median for this job
$40,410around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $28,250 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $40,410 |
| Top tenth | $55,950 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Medical Transcriptionists, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $27,740 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Minnesota · $50,030 |
| Spread | $22,290 |
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 | $42,900 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $44,147 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WY | $48,100 | $40,828 | $44,941 |
| SD | $46,070 | $39,197 | $44,494 |
| WI | $49,150 | $40,103 | $43,076 |
| ND | $44,660 | $38,064 | $42,976 |
| IA | $45,010 | $37,247 | $41,960 |
| NE | $45,880 | $37,661 | $41,671 |
| TN | $44,720 | $38,113 | $41,196 |
| MN | $50,030 | $40,500 | $41,152 |
| ME | $48,600 | $39,270 | $40,444 |
| AK | $48,360 | $41,037 | $40,345 |
| MT | $41,340 | $34,210 | $37,909 |
| TX | $42,900 | $36,650 | $37,716 |
| CT | $48,190 | $38,982 | $37,595 |
| IN | $41,400 | $34,253 | $37,157 |
| IL | $45,490 | $36,624 | $37,048 |
| MS | $38,600 | $31,743 | $36,364 |
| LA | $38,040 | $31,990 | $36,211 |
| KY | $39,000 | $32,269 | $35,669 |
| PA | $41,510 | $34,259 | $35,137 |
| CO | $43,080 | $35,608 | $35,122 |
| NM | $37,480 | $31,651 | $35,017 |
| WV | $37,440 | $31,301 | $34,867 |
| NV | $39,350 | $33,798 | $34,850 |
| FL | $42,050 | $35,967 | $34,767 |
| NC | $39,300 | $32,698 | $34,734 |
| ID | $38,140 | $31,657 | $34,627 |
| OH | $37,060 | $31,655 | $34,478 |
| MO | $37,480 | $31,471 | $34,296 |
| OR | $46,280 | $35,867 | $34,250 |
| AR | $35,100 | $29,543 | $34,150 |
| UT | $39,630 | $32,259 | $33,956 |
| DC | $45,110 | $36,885 | $33,289 |
| CA | $45,050 | $37,440 | $33,256 |
| HI | $44,310 | $35,826 | $32,987 |
| NY | $43,260 | $35,200 | $32,706 |
| MI | $37,280 | $30,801 | $32,703 |
| AL | $35,340 | $29,078 | $32,320 |
| KS | $35,390 | $28,930 | $32,157 |
| MD | $39,900 | $32,708 | $31,461 |
| SC | $33,870 | $29,019 | $31,144 |
| AZ | $36,550 | $31,037 | $30,697 |
| WA | $38,690 | $33,267 | $30,644 |
| NJ | $39,020 | $32,884 | $30,202 |
| VA | $35,130 | $29,148 | $28,931 |
| RI | $34,790 | $29,249 | $28,842 |
| VT | $33,030 | $27,869 | $28,840 |
| DE | $34,070 | $28,231 | $28,444 |
| MA | $36,910 | $30,312 | $28,005 |
| OK | $27,740 | $23,706 | $26,851 |
| GA | $28,330 | $24,125 | $24,948 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for medical transcriptionists, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $40,410 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for medical transcriptionists, 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 Alaska, at $41,037.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for medical transcriptionists. 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 Georgia, on $24,948.
- All wage figures for medical transcriptionists are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $40,410. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for medical transcriptionists 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 $41,037, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for medical transcriptionists 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; Georgia anchors the distribution at $24,948. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.