Occupation / job
Ophthalmic Medical 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
At $45,570, Ophthalmic Medical Technicians lands just under the $50,020 national midpoint — $4,450 apart, inside the range a single promotion or a move between states closes.
Employment stands at 71,010. Ophthalmic Medical Technicians is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
These roles suit people who want to be genuinely expert at one clinical technique, applied all day, to people who need it done properly.
How long it takes to become one of the 71,010 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
A quarter of Ophthalmic Medical Technicians earn under $38,170 and a quarter over $51,390: 1.3x, and $13,220 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 $38,170 — $11,850 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 would find a narrow, protocol-bound scope confining — the boundary of the role is set by regulation, not by your competence.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 71,010 figure counts people already working as Ophthalmic Medical Technicians, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
At 1.3x between $38,170 and $51,390, this is a narrow distribution. $45,570 is a reliable number to plan around, which is worth something — but so is knowing that outperforming the field will not be paid for.
The middle half of this field earns between $38,170 and $51,390. That is $13,220 of range, with $45,570 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Between $38,170 and $51,390 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $45,570. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $5,820; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $13,220.
There is $7,400 between $38,170 and $45,570, and $5,820 between $45,570 and $51,390. The lower half of the range is marginally the longer one — worth knowing if you would be entering Ophthalmic Medical Technicians at the bottom of it.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $18.35 at the bottom quarter, $21.90 at the midpoint, $24.70 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Ophthalmic Medical Technicians. The self-employed are excluded, so $45,570 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 $45,570 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