Occupation / job
Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians pays $62,930 against $50,020 across all occupations — $1,075 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
332,940 people work as Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians — large enough that the occupation is always hiring somewhere and always losing people somewhere else. Constant demand is security; it is rarely leverage.
Health technologist roles suit people who want clinical responsibility with a defined scope — a real technical skill, exercised on patients, without the open-ended liability of the diagnosing role.
No verified preparation time is on file for Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
$33,800 separates the bottom quarter of Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians at $47,650 from the top quarter at $81,450. At a 1.7x ratio the midpoint is a weak guide to your own first year — find out which end you would be entering at.
At $47,650 — $22.90 an hour — the 25th percentile of this field sits essentially at the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Being in the bottom quarter of Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians still means being paid like the average American worker.
Avoid it if shift work in a clinical setting would not be sustainable for you over a full career.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 332,940 people employed as Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
At 1.7x, the distribution for Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians is open enough that specialisation starts to pay. The distance from $47,650 to $81,450 is mostly what you can do that others in the same title cannot.
Put in money rather than ratios: $47,650 at the 25th percentile, $62,930 at the midpoint, $81,450 at the 75th. $33,800 separates the quarter of Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $47,650 and $81,450 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $62,930. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $18,520; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $33,800.
From $62,930 it is $15,280 down to the bottom quarter and $18,520 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians is $30.25 an hour. The quarters sit at $22.90 and $39.15, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $62,930 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Clinical Laboratory Technologists and Technicians, the hourly figure is $62,930 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else