Occupation / job
Paramedics
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
How many people are qualified for this, and how many are doing it
The pay figure above only describes people who got the job. This is the part it leaves out.
There are 150,588 people holding a current National Registry Paramedic certification (2026). Federal employment records account for 100,610 people working in Paramedics — 66.8%.
The remainder is a ceiling, not an unemployment rate. Holding the credential is not the same as wanting a job with it, and the remainder also holds everyone who moved into management or teaching, retired without giving the credential up, or works self-employed in a way the employment survey misses. What the pair does establish is that the pay figure above is a survivor's figure, and roughly how many people it is silent about. Everything else that gap contains
Denominator: people holding a current National Registry Paramedic certification = 150,588 (Standing count of people holding the credential, National Registry dashboard, retrieved 26 July 2026) · National Registry of Emergency Medical Technicians, National Registry Data Dashboard · view
Who this suits
Paramedics pays $60,600 against $50,020 across all occupations — $881 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
100,610 people are employed as Paramedics. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.
This work suits people who want into healthcare through a specific competence rather than a general one, and who are content that the scope of the role is drawn by regulation.
How long it takes to become one of the 100,610 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 middle half runs $49,660 to $73,470 — $1,984 a month between the quarters, a 1.5x ratio. Spreads this narrow are usually set by a grade or a scale, so the negotiation you are imagining probably is not available.
The 25th percentile is $49,660, $360 above the $50,020 typical American job. A floor above the national midpoint is rare, and it is worth more than an equivalent amount of upside.
Avoid it if you would want to broaden later; moving beyond this scope generally means retraining, not promotion.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 100,610 people employed as Paramedics; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
$49,660 to $73,470 is a 1.5x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
The middle half of this field earns between $49,660 and $73,470. That is $23,810 of range, with $60,600 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $73,470. Reaching it from the $60,600 midpoint is $12,870 a year; reaching it from the $49,660 that the bottom quarter of Paramedics earn is $23,810.
The climb from $60,600 to $73,470 is $12,870; the drop to $49,660 is $10,940. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Paramedics and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Paramedics is $29.13 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.87 and $35.32, 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 Paramedics for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $60,600 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $60,600 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