Occupation / job
Nurse Midwives
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
The $134,040 midpoint is $7,001 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Nurse Midwives near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
National employment of 7,920 makes this a small field. Small fields are relationship markets: the people already in Nurse Midwives tend to know who is hiring before the posting exists.
These roles suit people who want responsibility for the whole of a patient’s problem rather than a part of it, and who can carry that home without it consuming them.
We carry no verified training length for Nurse Midwives — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The middle half runs $116,510 to $157,400 — $3,407 a month between the quarters, a 1.4x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
Even at the 25th percentile Nurse Midwives pays $116,510, $66,490 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Almost the entire distribution sits above the typical American wage, which is rare and worth weighing against the entry cost.
Avoid it if you cannot do nights, cannot carry medico-legal exposure, or need to be finished thinking about work when the shift ends.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 7,920 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 1.4x. In a band that narrow, $134,040 is a genuinely representative number for Nurse Midwives and the main variable left is where you live.
Put in money rather than ratios: $116,510 at the 25th percentile, $134,040 at the midpoint, $157,400 at the 75th. $40,890 separates the quarter of Nurse Midwives at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $157,400. Reaching it from the $134,040 midpoint is $23,360 a year; reaching it from the $116,510 that the bottom quarter of Nurse Midwives earn is $40,890.
From $134,040 it is $17,530 down to the bottom quarter and $23,360 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 Nurse Midwives is $64.44 an hour. The quarters sit at $56.01 and $75.67, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Nurse Midwives. The self-employed are excluded, so $134,040 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Nurse Midwives, the hourly figure is $134,040 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