Occupation / job
Radiation Therapists
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 371,444 people holding at least one ARRT credential (2026). Federal employment records account for 308,030 people working in Radiologic Technologists and Technicians, Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists, Nuclear Medicine Technologists, Radiation Therapists — 82.9%.
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 at least one ARRT credential = 371,444 (Standing count of people holding the credential, ARRT census, last updated July 2026) · ARRT, Credential Statistics by Location and Discipline census · view
Who this suits
At $105,310 against a $50,020 national midpoint, Radiation Therapists pays 111% more than the typical American job — $55,290 a year of difference. Read the entry requirements before the number.
Nationally 17,070 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Radiation Therapists is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.
This work suits people prepared to spend years qualifying for a scope of practice they then hold for the rest of a career, with the accountability that comes attached to it.
How long it takes to become one of the 17,070 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
Between $92,060 and $126,340 there is $34,280, a ratio of 1.4x. Tight distributions are predictable, and predictable cuts both ways: little risk of being badly underpaid, little prospect of doing much better.
The 25th percentile is $92,060, $42,040 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if the length and cost of the training would be unbearable if you changed your mind halfway.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 17,070 people employed as Radiation Therapists; 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
The quarters are $92,060 and $126,340, a ratio of 1.4x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Radiation Therapists is the cost of living where you do it.
Put in money rather than ratios: $92,060 at the 25th percentile, $105,310 at the midpoint, $126,340 at the 75th. $34,280 separates the quarter of Radiation Therapists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
The 75th percentile is $126,340. Reaching it from the $105,310 midpoint is $21,030 a year; reaching it from the $92,060 that the bottom quarter of Radiation Therapists earn is $34,280.
It is $13,250 from $105,310 down to $92,060 but $21,030 up to $126,340. When a range leans this far upward, the interesting question is what puts someone in the top half, because the money is disproportionately there.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Radiation Therapists is $50.62 an hour. The quarters sit at $44.25 and $60.74, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Radiation Therapists. The self-employed are excluded, so $105,310 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 $105,310 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