Surgical Technologists
What the pay figures show
- Hawaii comes first for surgical technologists on every measure. $82,640 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $64,275 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For surgical technologists, Hawaii's $82,640 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $64,275. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$64,650
People doing it
117,460
Highest paid
$82,640
HI
Best off, really
$64,275
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$45,940
Highest tenth
$96,940
Lowest, really
$44,204
AL
States with data
51
National average
$68,710
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 $44,204 and $64,275. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 117,460 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $64,650. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $64,650 in the middle.
- Interstate variation for surgical technologists is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $44,204 to $64,275. 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.
- National employment in surgical technologists is 117,460 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- 51 jurisdictions report surgical technologists, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Surgical Technologists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $45,940 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $64,650 |
| Top tenth earn over | $96,940 |
| This salary | $64,650 |
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 Surgical Technologists
The national median for this job
$64,650around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $45,940 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $64,650 |
| Top tenth | $96,940 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Surgical Technologists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $49,110 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Hawaii · $82,640 |
| Spread | $33,530 |
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 | $65,220 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $67,116 |
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 | $80,380 | $65,377 | $64,275 |
| NV | $75,480 | $61,930 | $63,859 |
| WI | $74,120 | $58,028 | $62,331 |
| MN | $80,210 | $61,327 | $62,313 |
| ID | $72,550 | $56,877 | $62,212 |
| CT | $79,890 | $61,389 | $59,205 |
| CO | $75,740 | $59,489 | $58,678 |
| NH | $75,040 | $61,621 | $58,494 |
| ND | $61,640 | $51,708 | $58,379 |
| WA | $77,270 | $63,189 | $58,206 |
| RI | $74,130 | $58,621 | $57,804 |
| AZ | $72,260 | $58,261 | $57,624 |
| MA | $80,870 | $61,999 | $57,280 |
| HI | $82,640 | $62,130 | $57,205 |
| SD | $59,870 | $50,286 | $57,081 |
| OR | $81,390 | $59,516 | $56,833 |
| NE | $63,880 | $51,305 | $56,768 |
| NY | $79,550 | $61,095 | $56,766 |
| IN | $64,240 | $51,931 | $56,334 |
| TX | $65,220 | $54,584 | $56,171 |
| OH | $62,420 | $51,334 | $55,912 |
| OK | $61,190 | $49,093 | $55,607 |
| CA | $81,310 | $62,562 | $55,570 |
| NJ | $77,200 | $60,413 | $55,484 |
| IA | $60,540 | $49,135 | $55,353 |
| TN | $60,530 | $50,816 | $54,927 |
| WY | $58,850 | $49,466 | $54,449 |
| MT | $60,970 | $49,061 | $54,364 |
| SC | $62,160 | $50,320 | $54,005 |
| KY | $60,490 | $48,784 | $53,924 |
| DC | $77,520 | $59,745 | $53,919 |
| AR | $57,400 | $46,636 | $53,909 |
| MO | $61,120 | $49,355 | $53,785 |
| MI | $63,320 | $50,617 | $53,743 |
| LA | $57,370 | $46,942 | $53,135 |
| KS | $60,600 | $47,779 | $53,109 |
| VA | $67,580 | $53,247 | $52,851 |
| GA | $64,010 | $51,017 | $52,758 |
| UT | $62,720 | $49,784 | $52,404 |
| MD | $68,970 | $54,438 | $52,362 |
| NC | $60,920 | $49,207 | $52,271 |
| PA | $62,680 | $50,619 | $51,917 |
| IL | $64,650 | $51,071 | $51,662 |
| ME | $62,860 | $49,765 | $51,253 |
| VT | $60,660 | $49,027 | $50,734 |
| FL | $62,440 | $52,351 | $50,604 |
| DE | $62,250 | $49,310 | $49,681 |
| NM | $51,780 | $42,517 | $47,040 |
| MS | $49,810 | $40,302 | $46,169 |
| WV | $49,110 | $40,233 | $44,817 |
| AL | $49,420 | $39,770 | $44,204 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for surgical technologists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $64,650, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for surgical technologists, 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 $65,377.
- The price adjustment for surgical technologists 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 — Alabama anchors the bottom at $44,204. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for surgical technologists, with a national value of $64,650. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Retained-pay figures for surgical technologists 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 $65,377, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms figures for surgical technologists 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.