Occupation / job
Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants
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
$45,930 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint puts Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants $340 a month below the middle of the American labour market — close enough that the spread below matters more to your outcome than the headline does.
With 961,610 employed, this is one of the biggest occupations in the country. Work at this scale is always available and rarely scarce, and the wage on this page is what that combination produces.
Administrative assistant work suits people who make an organisation function and are content that this is mostly invisible when done well and highly visible when not.
No verified preparation time is on file for Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants. 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
A quarter of Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants earn under $38,570 and a quarter over $50,580: 1.3x, and $12,010 between the ends. That is a narrow band — enough room to be paid better than average, not enough for the occupation to be a route to a materially different income.
A quarter of the field earns under $38,570 — $11,450 below the $50,020 the typical American job pays. That is the number to plan on for a first year, not the midpoint.
Avoid it if you want a visible career ladder; the routes up out of administration are narrow and mostly sideways first.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 961,610 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
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $38,570 and $50,580 is the whole of the negotiation.
The middle half of this field earns between $38,570 and $50,580. That is $12,010 of range, with $45,930 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $50,580. Reaching it from the $45,930 midpoint is $4,650 a year; reaching it from the $38,570 that the bottom quarter of Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants earn is $12,010.
The midpoint sits high inside its own range: $7,360 above the $38,570 bottom quarter but only $4,650 below the $50,580 top quarter. Most of the distance in Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants is spent climbing out of the bottom, and once you are past the middle there is not much further to go.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $22.08 at the midpoint for Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, $18.54 at the 25th percentile and $24.31 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $45,930 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 Medical Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, the hourly figure is $45,930 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