Occupation / job
Orthotists and Prosthetists
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
$81,110 is $2,590 a month above the $50,020 the typical American job pays. Differences of that size in Orthotists and Prosthetists are held in place by a barrier — a licence, a residency, a clearance — and the barrier is the real subject of this page.
9,390 people work as Orthotists and Prosthetists. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
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 9,390 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 earn below $61,290 and a quarter above $99,990: a 1.6x ratio, $38,700 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
Even the bottom quarter of Orthotists and Prosthetists earns $61,290 — $29.46 an hour and $11,270 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you would want to broaden later; moving beyond this scope generally means retraining, not promotion.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 9,390 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
A 1.6x ratio is the most common shape in this data: some room to move, none of it quick. Read $81,110 as where you might be after years in Orthotists and Prosthetists, and $61,290 as where you would start.
Put in money rather than ratios: $61,290 at the 25th percentile, $81,110 at the midpoint, $99,990 at the 75th. $38,700 separates the quarter of Orthotists and Prosthetists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $99,990. Reaching it from the $81,110 midpoint is $18,880 a year; reaching it from the $61,290 that the bottom quarter of Orthotists and Prosthetists earn is $38,700.
$19,820 down to $61,290, $18,880 up to $99,990: the midpoint of Orthotists and Prosthetists 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 $38.99 at the midpoint for Orthotists and Prosthetists, $29.46 at the 25th percentile and $48.07 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
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 Orthotists and Prosthetists for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $81,110 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Orthotists and Prosthetists, the hourly figure is $81,110 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