Physician Assistants
What the pay figures show
- A job board will not tell you this about physician assistants. The best headline number is New Jersey, at $165,690. State taxes differ, so Washington leaves you more. Prices differ too, so South Dakota leaves you better off again — $116,134 once levelled out. Moving for the biggest salary can leave you worse off.
- Wage data for physician assistants places New Jersey first at $165,690. That position is not robust: state income tax alone reorders it to Washington, and regional price parity reorders it again to South Dakota at $116,134. Because published comparisons almost universally stop at the nominal median, the state that appears best for this occupation is routinely not the state where a worker's income goes furthest.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$135,880
People doing it
162,150
Highest paid
$165,690
NJ
Best off, really
$116,134
SD, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$99,380
Highest tenth
$190,280
Lowest, really
$85,841
DC
States with data
51
National average
$141,280
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.09%
SD, 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 $85,841 and $116,134. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- About 162,150 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $135,880. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $135,880, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation for physician assistants is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $85,841 to $116,134. 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.
- With 162,150 workers, physician assistants 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.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for physician assistants, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Physician Assistants
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $99,380 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $135,880 |
| Top tenth earn over | $190,280 |
| This salary | $135,880 |
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 Physician Assistants
The national median for this job
$135,880around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $99,380 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $135,880 |
| Top tenth | $190,280 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Physician Assistants, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Alabama · $104,960 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Jersey · $165,690 |
| Spread | $60,730 |
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 | $134,550 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $138,462 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| SD | $133,200 | $102,308 | $116,134 |
| WY | $136,080 | $104,277 | $114,781 |
| ND | $133,450 | $101,136 | $114,185 |
| WA | $164,360 | $123,606 | $113,858 |
| AK | $150,700 | $114,269 | $112,343 |
| MT | $141,470 | $101,329 | $112,283 |
| NM | $139,920 | $101,376 | $112,159 |
| OK | $136,550 | $98,954 | $112,083 |
| IA | $134,770 | $98,872 | $111,384 |
| VT | $150,490 | $106,073 | $109,766 |
| NH | $150,960 | $114,447 | $108,640 |
| LA | $128,870 | $95,869 | $108,516 |
| OH | $132,090 | $98,633 | $107,430 |
| NE | $133,040 | $96,849 | $107,162 |
| MO | $135,130 | $98,214 | $107,031 |
| NJ | $165,690 | $116,151 | $106,675 |
| NV | $134,660 | $103,306 | $106,523 |
| TX | $134,550 | $103,231 | $106,232 |
| IN | $132,050 | $97,656 | $105,936 |
| ID | $133,790 | $96,474 | $105,522 |
| WV | $128,610 | $94,170 | $104,899 |
| NY | $160,880 | $112,208 | $104,257 |
| WI | $133,950 | $96,324 | $103,466 |
| HI | $164,050 | $112,266 | $103,367 |
| UT | $134,740 | $97,365 | $102,487 |
| AR | $118,430 | $88,222 | $101,982 |
| MI | $131,510 | $95,815 | $101,731 |
| MN | $141,190 | $99,519 | $101,120 |
| NC | $129,360 | $95,031 | $100,947 |
| CA | $165,650 | $113,174 | $100,527 |
| KS | $125,640 | $90,419 | $100,504 |
| RI | $139,930 | $101,614 | $100,199 |
| OR | $155,780 | $104,339 | $99,635 |
| TN | $118,240 | $92,012 | $99,456 |
| DE | $139,350 | $98,546 | $99,287 |
| AZ | $134,650 | $100,336 | $99,239 |
| KY | $120,760 | $89,676 | $99,124 |
| CO | $134,540 | $98,013 | $96,677 |
| PA | $127,070 | $94,217 | $96,633 |
| FL | $129,620 | $99,861 | $96,529 |
| VA | $135,940 | $97,125 | $96,403 |
| CT | $139,860 | $99,719 | $96,171 |
| IL | $131,950 | $95,067 | $96,168 |
| SC | $122,490 | $89,572 | $96,131 |
| ME | $131,170 | $93,184 | $95,970 |
| MD | $137,560 | $98,899 | $95,127 |
| MA | $142,410 | $101,803 | $94,055 |
| MS | $105,920 | $79,200 | $90,730 |
| GA | $115,390 | $84,848 | $87,744 |
| AL | $104,960 | $78,299 | $87,028 |
| DC | $135,140 | $95,116 | $85,841 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of physician assistants 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 $135,880.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for physician assistants, 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 $123,606.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for physician assistants. 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 the District of Columbia, on $85,841.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for physician assistants, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $135,880, 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.
- Retained-pay figures for physician assistants 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 $123,606, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms results for physician assistants 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; the District of Columbia anchors the distribution at $85,841. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.