Optometrists
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. Alaska pays optometrists best, at $170,310. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $125,520 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for optometrists is also the real leader: Alaska at $170,310, holding through tax and through price deflation to $125,520. 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
$136,570
People doing it
42,790
Highest paid
$170,310
AK
Best off, really
$125,520
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$74,870
Highest tenth
$202,180
Lowest, really
$83,179
OK
States with data
51
National average
$141,550
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $83,179 and $125,520. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Just 42,790 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $136,570, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation for optometrists is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $83,179 to $125,520. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 42,790 are employed nationally in optometrists — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for optometrists, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Optometrists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $74,870 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $136,570 |
| Top tenth earn over | $202,180 |
| This salary | $136,570 |
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 Optometrists
The national median for this job
$136,570around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $74,870 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $136,570 |
| Top tenth | $202,180 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Optometrists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $97,350 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $170,310 |
| Spread | $72,960 |
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 | $126,000 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $129,663 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $170,310 | $127,673 | $125,520 |
| NC | $161,560 | $115,755 | $122,962 |
| AL | $145,090 | $104,523 | $116,176 |
| NM | $144,660 | $104,384 | $115,487 |
| ND | $132,110 | $100,246 | $113,181 |
| DE | $161,270 | $112,081 | $112,925 |
| MD | $165,840 | $116,671 | $112,221 |
| SC | $145,950 | $104,385 | $112,029 |
| MN | $158,700 | $110,113 | $111,884 |
| TN | $134,170 | $102,971 | $111,302 |
| FL | $151,670 | $114,932 | $111,097 |
| ME | $154,110 | $107,224 | $110,429 |
| WA | $157,560 | $118,958 | $109,576 |
| KS | $138,580 | $98,541 | $109,533 |
| OH | $134,850 | $100,444 | $109,402 |
| IN | $135,500 | $99,913 | $108,384 |
| CO | $152,000 | $109,178 | $107,690 |
| WI | $139,720 | $99,946 | $107,357 |
| NV | $135,650 | $103,983 | $107,221 |
| AR | $124,470 | $92,194 | $106,573 |
| MO | $133,810 | $97,373 | $106,115 |
| KY | $128,860 | $94,949 | $104,953 |
| IL | $145,620 | $103,734 | $104,935 |
| IA | $125,380 | $92,811 | $104,555 |
| MI | $135,650 | $98,468 | $104,549 |
| NY | $161,140 | $112,370 | $104,408 |
| NJ | $159,040 | $112,029 | $102,889 |
| CT | $150,340 | $106,253 | $102,473 |
| PA | $135,400 | $99,655 | $102,210 |
| NE | $125,040 | $91,745 | $101,515 |
| VT | $137,290 | $98,054 | $101,468 |
| LA | $118,060 | $88,730 | $100,435 |
| TX | $126,000 | $97,387 | $100,218 |
| MA | $151,730 | $107,707 | $99,509 |
| HI | $154,620 | $106,565 | $98,118 |
| WV | $118,010 | $87,334 | $97,285 |
| RI | $134,520 | $98,173 | $96,806 |
| GA | $128,830 | $93,491 | $96,683 |
| WY | $111,400 | $87,200 | $95,984 |
| VA | $131,570 | $94,389 | $93,688 |
| MS | $108,070 | $80,626 | $92,364 |
| NH | $125,560 | $97,086 | $92,160 |
| UT | $119,070 | $87,297 | $91,890 |
| SD | $102,320 | $80,812 | $91,733 |
| AZ | $122,250 | $92,170 | $91,163 |
| OR | $132,020 | $90,451 | $86,373 |
| MT | $104,280 | $77,660 | $86,056 |
| DC | $134,840 | $94,936 | $85,679 |
| CA | $136,300 | $95,843 | $85,133 |
| ID | $103,390 | $76,938 | $84,155 |
| OK | $97,350 | $73,435 | $83,179 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of optometrists 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 $136,570.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for optometrists. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Alaska keeps the most at $127,673.
- The price adjustment for optometrists 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 — Oklahoma anchors the bottom at $83,179. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for optometrists, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $136,570, 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.
- The household modeled for optometrists is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Alaska retains the most, $127,673. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for optometrists 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.