Surgical Assistants

Surgical Assistants pays $66,800 at the midpoint, 34% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.

22,270 people do this work nationally. That is the size at which Surgical Assistants becomes a career rather than a post — enough employers in a normal city that leaving one of them is a decision rather than a crisis.

These healthcare roles sit at the edge of the clinical team and suit people who want health work organised around a defined technique or population rather than around a ward.

No verified preparation time is on file for Surgical Assistants. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.

The quarters sit at $50,170 and $88,010 — 1.8x, or $3,153 a month apart. At that width the occupation contains genuinely different jobs, and which one you are being offered matters more than the title does.

The bottom quarter of Surgical Assistants still clears $50,170 — $150 above the $50,020 typical job. A high floor is the most valuable and least advertised property an occupation can have.

Avoid it if you need a large local market — these roles exist in far fewer settings than the mainstream clinical ones.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 22,270 people employed as Surgical Assistants; 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.

From $50,170 to $88,010 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $66,800 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.

The middle half of this field earns between $50,170 and $88,010. That is $37,840 of range, with $66,800 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.

The 75th percentile is $88,010. Reaching it from the $66,800 midpoint is $21,210 a year; reaching it from the $50,170 that the bottom quarter of Surgical Assistants earn is $37,840.

From $66,800 it is $16,630 down to the bottom quarter and $21,210 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.

Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $32.11 at the midpoint for Surgical Assistants, $24.12 at the 25th percentile and $42.31 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.