Occupation / job
Surgical Technologists
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
The $64,650 midpoint sits $7.03 an hour above the $50,020 typical American job. That is a 29% premium, and premiums are rationed: whatever rations this one is the thing standing between you and Surgical Technologists.
With 117,460 in the occupation, Surgical Technologists 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.
These roles suit people who want to be genuinely expert at one clinical technique, applied all day, to people who need it done properly.
No verified preparation time is on file for Surgical Technologists. 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.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Surgical Technologists earn under $54,690 and a quarter over $79,750 — 1.5x, or $25,060 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
The 25th percentile is $54,690, $4,670 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 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 117,460 people employed as Surgical Technologists; 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 $54,690 and $79,750, a ratio of 1.5x. In a distribution this narrow, the biggest single lever on your pay in Surgical Technologists is the cost of living where you do it.
The middle half of this field earns between $54,690 and $79,750. That is $25,060 of range, with $64,650 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $79,750. Reaching it from the $64,650 midpoint is $15,100 a year; reaching it from the $54,690 that the bottom quarter of Surgical Technologists earn is $25,060.
$15,100 separates $64,650 from the $79,750 top quarter, while only $9,960 separates it from $54,690. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Surgical Technologists has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Surgical Technologists is $31.08 an hour. The quarters sit at $26.29 and $38.34, 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 Surgical Technologists. The self-employed are excluded, so $64,650 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $64,650 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Surgical Technologists, 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