Occupation / job
Radiologic Technologists and Technicians
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
$80,110 against a $50,020 national midpoint is 60% more, or $14.46 an hour. Almost nothing pays this much more without a long, expensive or restricted route in — read that route before reading the number again.
With 230,490 in the occupation, Radiologic Technologists and Technicians is a big field with a visible internal market. Big fields reward moving: the pay you can negotiate on arrival usually beats what the annual review will give you for staying.
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 230,490 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
$64,810 to $98,750 — 1.5x, or $2,828 a month between the quarters. An unremarkable spread, which means the useful planning number for Radiologic Technologists and Technicians is the bottom of it rather than the middle.
Even the bottom quarter of Radiologic Technologists and Technicians earns $64,810 — $31.15 an hour and $14,790 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you would find a narrow, protocol-bound scope confining — the boundary of the role is set by regulation, not by your competence.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 230,490 people employed as Radiologic Technologists and Technicians; 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
At 1.5x between $64,810 and $98,750 this is a normally shaped occupation. $80,110 is what the middle of Radiologic Technologists and Technicians earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
The middle half of this field earns between $64,810 and $98,750. That is $33,940 of range, with $80,110 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $98,750, the 75th percentile, is worth $18,640 a year more than the $80,110 midpoint and $33,940 more than the $64,810 a quarter of Radiologic Technologists and Technicians settle for.
The climb from $80,110 to $98,750 is $18,640; the drop to $64,810 is $15,300. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Radiologic Technologists and Technicians 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 Radiologic Technologists and Technicians is $38.51 an hour. The quarters sit at $31.15 and $47.47, 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 Radiologic Technologists and Technicians for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $80,110 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $80,110 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Radiologic Technologists and Technicians, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else