Occupation / job
Nuclear Medicine Technologists
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
How many people are qualified for this, and how many are doing it
The pay figure above only describes people who got the job. This is the part it leaves out.
There are 371,444 people holding at least one ARRT credential (2026). Federal employment records account for 308,030 people working in Radiologic Technologists and Technicians, Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists, Nuclear Medicine Technologists, Radiation Therapists — 82.9%.
The remainder is a ceiling, not an unemployment rate. Holding the credential is not the same as wanting a job with it, and the remainder also holds everyone who moved into management or teaching, retired without giving the credential up, or works self-employed in a way the employment survey misses. What the pair does establish is that the pay figure above is a survivor's figure, and roughly how many people it is silent about. Everything else that gap contains
Denominator: people holding at least one ARRT credential = 371,444 (Standing count of people holding the credential, ARRT census, last updated July 2026) · ARRT, Credential Statistics by Location and Discipline census · view
Who this suits
At $101,370 against a $50,020 national midpoint, Nuclear Medicine Technologists pays 103% more than the typical American job — $51,350 a year of difference. Read the entry requirements before the number.
Nationally 17,080 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Nuclear Medicine Technologists is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
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.
How long it takes to become one of the 17,080 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
Between $86,720 and $117,120 there is $30,400, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
The 25th percentile is $86,720, $36,700 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
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 17,080 people employed as Nuclear Medicine Technologists; 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
The quarters are $86,720 and $117,120, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Nuclear Medicine Technologists is the cost of living where you do it.
The middle half of this field earns between $86,720 and $117,120. That is $30,400 of range, with $101,370 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $117,120. Reaching it from the $101,370 midpoint is $15,750 a year; reaching it from the $86,720 that the bottom quarter of Nuclear Medicine Technologists earn is $30,400.
$14,650 down to $86,720, $15,750 up to $117,120: the midpoint of Nuclear Medicine Technologists is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $48.73 at the midpoint for Nuclear Medicine Technologists, $41.69 at the 25th percentile and $56.30 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 Nuclear Medicine Technologists. The self-employed are excluded, so $101,370 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 $101,370 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