Paramedics
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays paramedics the most, at $104,310. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $75,728 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Washington leads for paramedics at $104,310 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $75,728 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
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
$60,600
People doing it
100,610
Highest paid
$104,310
WA
Best off, really
$75,728
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,230
Highest tenth
$84,850
Lowest, really
$43,235
OK
States with data
51
National average
$63,360
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $43,235 to $75,728.
- About 100,610 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $60,600. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $60,600 in the middle.
- Interstate variation in paramedics pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $43,235 to $75,728, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 100,610 workers, paramedics sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- 51 jurisdictions report paramedics, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Paramedics
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,230 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $60,600 |
| Top tenth earn over | $84,850 |
| This salary | $60,600 |
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 Paramedics
The national median for this job
$60,600around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,230 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $60,600 |
| Top tenth | $84,850 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Paramedics, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Oklahoma · $46,790 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $104,310 |
| Spread | $57,520 |
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 | $57,500 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $59,172 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $104,310 | $82,212 | $75,728 |
| NJ | $86,630 | $66,446 | $61,025 |
| MN | $76,300 | $58,842 | $59,788 |
| WY | $64,040 | $53,636 | $59,039 |
| ND | $62,320 | $52,254 | $58,996 |
| AK | $71,860 | $59,384 | $58,382 |
| CT | $77,480 | $59,826 | $57,697 |
| HI | $81,280 | $61,276 | $56,419 |
| IA | $60,590 | $49,173 | $55,396 |
| UT | $65,420 | $51,834 | $54,561 |
| DC | $78,550 | $60,382 | $54,494 |
| IN | $60,320 | $48,897 | $53,043 |
| OR | $74,840 | $55,482 | $52,980 |
| NY | $73,200 | $56,970 | $52,934 |
| ID | $60,380 | $48,348 | $52,883 |
| TN | $57,690 | $48,534 | $52,461 |
| MO | $59,180 | $47,887 | $52,186 |
| LA | $56,050 | $45,921 | $51,979 |
| CA | $74,590 | $58,409 | $51,882 |
| WI | $59,710 | $48,067 | $51,631 |
| ME | $63,050 | $49,905 | $51,397 |
| NV | $59,280 | $49,811 | $51,363 |
| DE | $64,240 | $50,788 | $51,170 |
| NH | $64,210 | $53,773 | $51,044 |
| MD | $66,660 | $52,923 | $50,904 |
| CO | $63,910 | $51,428 | $50,727 |
| PA | $61,000 | $49,321 | $50,585 |
| RI | $63,550 | $51,279 | $50,565 |
| VT | $60,360 | $48,806 | $50,505 |
| MS | $54,630 | $43,982 | $50,385 |
| NE | $56,230 | $45,506 | $50,352 |
| NM | $55,530 | $45,354 | $50,178 |
| TX | $57,500 | $48,381 | $49,788 |
| NC | $57,320 | $46,458 | $49,351 |
| FL | $60,140 | $50,502 | $48,817 |
| IL | $60,660 | $48,062 | $48,619 |
| MA | $66,340 | $52,487 | $48,492 |
| GA | $57,660 | $46,231 | $47,810 |
| VA | $60,480 | $48,059 | $47,701 |
| AZ | $58,600 | $48,203 | $47,676 |
| AR | $50,310 | $41,201 | $47,627 |
| SC | $53,550 | $43,973 | $47,193 |
| SD | $48,830 | $41,415 | $47,012 |
| OH | $51,300 | $42,705 | $46,514 |
| MT | $50,890 | $41,435 | $45,914 |
| KS | $51,020 | $40,616 | $45,147 |
| KY | $49,890 | $40,638 | $44,920 |
| MI | $52,080 | $42,064 | $44,661 |
| WV | $48,460 | $39,739 | $44,266 |
| AL | $48,540 | $39,102 | $43,461 |
| OK | $46,790 | $38,171 | $43,235 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for paramedics, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $60,600 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 paramedics, 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 Washington, at $82,212.
- The price adjustment for paramedics 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 $43,235. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for paramedics are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $60,600. 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 paramedics 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 $82,212, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for paramedics 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.