Occupation / job
Opticians, Dispensing
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 $47,260 against $50,020, Opticians, Dispensing sits $1.32 an hour under the typical American job. A gap that small is not a reason to choose it or to rule it out; the spread and the entry cost are where the real decision is.
73,530 people are employed as Opticians, Dispensing. At that scale every large metro has a real market, and the difference between a good year and a bad one is usually which employer you are at rather than whether anyone is hiring.
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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Opticians, Dispensing. 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
$38,820 to $61,700 — 1.6x, or $1,906 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Opticians, Dispensing is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
The 25th percentile is $38,820 — $18.66 an hour, and $11,200 below the $50,020 typical American job. Entry-level in this field means that number, not the midpoint, so budget against it.
Avoid it if you would want to broaden later; moving beyond this scope generally means retraining, not promotion.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 73,530 figure counts people already working as Opticians, Dispensing, 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
1.6x between $38,820 and $61,700 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $47,260 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
The middle half of this field earns between $38,820 and $61,700. That is $22,880 of range, with $47,260 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $61,700, the 75th percentile, is worth $14,440 a year more than the $47,260 midpoint and $22,880 more than the $38,820 a quarter of Opticians, Dispensing settle for.
The distance from the midpoint up to $61,700 is $14,440 — well over the $8,440 down to $38,820. Distributions leaning this way mean the median understates what the upper half of Opticians, Dispensing earns, and half the field is in that upper half.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Opticians, Dispensing is $22.72 an hour. The quarters sit at $18.66 and $29.66, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Opticians, Dispensing for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $47,260 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Opticians, Dispensing, the hourly figure is $47,260 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