Occupation / job
Orderlies
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
Orderlies pays $38,290 where the typical American job pays $50,020 — $11,730 a year short, or $5.63 an hour. That is a liveable wage in a cheap state and a difficult one in an expensive city, and nothing about the national figure tells you which you would be in.
52,440 people are employed as Orderlies. 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.
Aide and nursing assistant work suits people who can do physically heavy, intimate care with patience, and who understand that the relationship with the patient is most of what the job actually is.
How long it takes to become one of the 52,440 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
The quarters sit at $35,570 and $44,560, $749 a month apart at a ratio of 1.3x. Narrow enough that what you can expect is close to what everyone else gets.
A quarter of Orderlies earn under $35,570, which is $14,450 short of the $50,020 national midpoint. Assume you start there and check whether the arithmetic still works.
Avoid it if your back or knees are already a concern — the lifting is real and it does not become someone else’s job with seniority.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 52,440 figure counts people already working as Orderlies, 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
A 1.3x ratio from $35,570 to $44,560 makes $38,290 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
In cash terms the middle half of Orderlies runs $35,570 to $44,560 — $8,990 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $38,290.
Getting to $44,560, the 75th percentile, is worth $6,270 a year more than the $38,290 midpoint and $8,990 more than the $35,570 a quarter of Orderlies settle for.
The upper half of the middle range — $38,290 to $44,560, or $6,270 — is far longer than the lower half at $2,720. In a shape like this an average would flatter Orderlies considerably, and would describe nobody.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $18.40 at the midpoint for Orderlies, $17.10 at the 25th percentile and $21.42 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 Orderlies. The self-employed are excluded, so $38,290 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Orderlies, the hourly figure is $38,290 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