Occupation / job
Medical Records Specialists
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
Medical Records Specialists pays $51,140 at the midpoint against $50,020 across all occupations. The headline argues neither for nor against it; the case has to be made on the spread, the entry cost and what the day is actually like.
With 194,720 in the occupation, Medical Records Specialists is a big field with a visible internal market. Big fields reward moving: the pay you can negotiate on arrival usually beats what the annual review will give you for staying.
This work suits people who want into healthcare through a specific competence rather than a general one, and who are content that the scope of the role is drawn by regulation.
How long it takes to become one of the 194,720 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $43,490 to $64,820 — $1,777 a month between the quarters, a 1.5x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
Even the bottom quarter, under $43,490, lands within $6,530 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Medical Records Specialists is not really the money.
Avoid it if you would find a narrow, protocol-bound scope confining — the boundary of the role is set by regulation, not by your competence.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 194,720 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
Top quarter to bottom quarter is 1.5x. In a band that narrow, $51,140 is a genuinely representative number for Medical Records Specialists and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $43,490 at the 25th percentile, $51,140 at the midpoint, $64,820 at the 75th. $21,330 separates the quarter of Medical Records Specialists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $64,820. Reaching it from the $51,140 midpoint is $13,680 a year; reaching it from the $43,490 that the bottom quarter of Medical Records Specialists earn is $21,330.
It is $7,650 from $51,140 down to $43,490 but $13,680 up to $64,820. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $24.58 at the midpoint for Medical Records Specialists, $20.90 at the 25th percentile and $31.16 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Medical Records Specialists. The self-employed are excluded, so $51,140 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $51,140 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else