Nuclear Medicine Technologists
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. California pays nuclear medicine technologists best, at $162,380. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $98,812 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for nuclear medicine technologists is also the real leader: California at $162,380, holding through tax and through price deflation to $98,812. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$101,370
People doing it
17,080
Highest paid
$162,380
CA
Best off, really
$98,812
CA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$78,080
Highest tenth
$134,500
Lowest, really
$56,441
KS
States with data
49
National average
$105,160
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
112.58%
CA, 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 $56,441 to $98,812.
- Just 17,080 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $101,370. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, California pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in nuclear medicine technologists 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 $56,441 to $98,812 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 17,080 are employed nationally in nuclear medicine technologists — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for nuclear medicine technologists in 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Nuclear Medicine Technologists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $78,080 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $101,370 |
| Top tenth earn over | $134,500 |
| This salary | $101,370 |
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 Nuclear Medicine Technologists
The national median for this job
$101,370around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $78,080 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $101,370 |
| Top tenth | $134,500 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Nuclear Medicine Technologists, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Kansas · $64,610 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $162,380 |
| Spread | $97,770 |
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 | $101,170 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $104,111 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| CA | $162,380 | $111,243 | $98,812 |
| ND | $102,640 | $80,295 | $90,655 |
| WA | $126,200 | $97,524 | $89,832 |
| NV | $109,150 | $85,617 | $88,283 |
| UT | $111,770 | $82,486 | $86,826 |
| NE | $104,320 | $78,176 | $86,501 |
| CO | $116,990 | $86,693 | $85,512 |
| IN | $103,230 | $78,437 | $85,087 |
| ID | $104,630 | $77,745 | $85,037 |
| MT | $100,490 | $75,208 | $83,338 |
| NJ | $124,280 | $90,485 | $83,103 |
| NM | $98,400 | $74,564 | $82,495 |
| CT | $117,150 | $85,466 | $82,425 |
| TX | $101,170 | $80,003 | $82,329 |
| OH | $97,570 | $75,504 | $82,237 |
| HI | $125,650 | $89,042 | $81,984 |
| OR | $122,100 | $84,588 | $80,774 |
| MO | $98,010 | $74,111 | $80,764 |
| KY | $95,470 | $72,769 | $80,436 |
| NH | $107,890 | $84,731 | $80,432 |
| IA | $92,890 | $71,260 | $80,278 |
| NY | $118,650 | $86,215 | $80,106 |
| MN | $107,380 | $78,593 | $79,858 |
| MA | $118,250 | $86,426 | $79,848 |
| WI | $98,450 | $73,700 | $79,165 |
| IL | $104,950 | $77,612 | $78,511 |
| OK | $90,640 | $69,017 | $78,174 |
| GA | $100,880 | $75,364 | $77,937 |
| RI | $104,000 | $78,407 | $77,315 |
| LA | $87,670 | $68,262 | $77,268 |
| MI | $95,400 | $72,140 | $76,595 |
| AZ | $100,130 | $77,171 | $76,327 |
| DC | $116,630 | $83,934 | $75,750 |
| ME | $99,500 | $73,356 | $75,549 |
| SD | $82,010 | $66,524 | $75,514 |
| AR | $83,670 | $65,055 | $75,201 |
| VA | $101,820 | $75,366 | $74,806 |
| FL | $97,310 | $77,288 | $74,709 |
| DE | $100,470 | $74,111 | $74,668 |
| MD | $104,150 | $77,440 | $74,487 |
| PA | $94,570 | $72,457 | $74,315 |
| TN | $84,470 | $68,255 | $73,777 |
| SC | $90,230 | $68,640 | $73,666 |
| MS | $83,340 | $64,218 | $73,567 |
| WY | $81,900 | $66,447 | $73,140 |
| AL | $82,630 | $63,461 | $70,536 |
| NC | $85,240 | $65,904 | $70,007 |
| WV | $76,460 | $60,007 | $66,844 |
| KS | $64,610 | $50,777 | $56,441 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of nuclear medicine technologists earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $101,370.
- Take-home figures for nuclear medicine technologists 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 California, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $111,243.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for nuclear medicine technologists. 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 Kansas, on $56,441.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for nuclear medicine technologists, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $101,370, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Take-home calculations for nuclear medicine technologists 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 $111,243, in California. 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 results for nuclear medicine technologists 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; Kansas anchors the distribution at $56,441. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.