Medical assistant salary in 2026, and what raises it

The Bureau of Labor Statistics puts the median pay for medical assistants at $45,690 a year, or $21.97 an hour, in its May 2025 estimate (Occupational Outlook Handbook, 31-9092). Half of the 833,900 people doing this work earn more than that and half earn less. This post is about what the median hides: how wide the range around it is, which clinical settings sit where inside it, and which of those things a medical assistant can actually change.

What the whole range looks like

Medical assistant pay, May 2025

$45,690Median annual wage

$21.97Median hourly wage

$36,050Lowest 10 percent earned less than

$59,310Highest 10 percent earned more than

The bottom tenth of medical assistants earned less than $36,050 in May 2025. The top tenth earned more than $59,310. That is $23,260 between the two ends of one occupation, and the core work is the same at both ends: O*NET's task list for 31-9092.00 has medical assistants interviewing patients and taking vital signs, recording histories and test results, preparing exam rooms, sterilizing instruments.

How to read this. The median is the middle of the list, not the average, which means a small number of unusually high earners cannot drag it upward. Every figure on this page is national and dated May 2025. None of it is a starting offer. These are the wages of everyone already in the job, the Medical Assistant hired last month and the one who has stayed in the same practice for a decade counted together, so a first posting sits lower in the range than the median - and BLS does not say how much lower.

The hourly figure is the one to carry into a conversation with a recruiter, because it is the one a clinic quotes. BLS reports that most medical assistants work full time, and that some work evening, weekend or holiday shifts in facilities open around the clock. That matters for the annual number: a schedule short of full time pulls a $21.97 hourly rate well under $45,690 a year, and the wage table does not separate the medical assistant working nights in a 24-hour facility from the one working weekday clinic hours.

Which clinical setting pays medical assistants the most?

Median annual wage by industry, May 2025

The four industries that employ almost all medical assistants, ranked by median pay. The occupation's overall median is $45,690.

Outpatient care centers		$48,56010% of employment
Hospitals; state, local, and private		$46,91017% of employment
Offices of physicians		$45,52056% of employment
Offices of other health practitioners		$38,4008% of employment

Outpatient care centers pay the most of the four, at $48,560. Offices of other health practitioners - the chiropractic, optometry and podiatry practices - pay $38,400. Same title, same duty list, $10,160 apart.

Now set the employment shares beside the pay, because they run close to backwards. Offices of physicians employ 56 percent of all medical assistants and pay $45,520, which is $170 below the occupation's own median. Hospitals take another 17 percent at $46,910. Outpatient care centers, the best-paying of the four, account for about 10 percent of the jobs, and the lowest-paying setting accounts for 8 percent. Those four shares add to 91 percent of the occupation, which leaves roughly one medical assistant in eleven working in a setting BLS does not break out separately and does not publish a median for at all.

The setting deserves more attention than any credential, because the setting is the only lever in this post that BLS actually prices. A Medical Assistant three years into a six-physician family practice is, on these figures, about $3,040 a year from the median of the same work in an outpatient care center. That is a change of employer rather than of training, and it costs no classroom hours. The claim is narrow on purpose: BLS publishes a wage gap between industries and publishes nothing at all about what a certificate adds, so one of those two moves is measurable and the other is a hope.

Does the job itself change as the pay goes up?

O*NET rates the importance of each work activity in an occupation on a 0 to 100 scale. In its 31-9092.00 profile, updated in 2026, getting information scores 97, working with computers 92, documenting and recording information 91, and assisting and caring for others 90. Nothing in that profile distinguishes the $36,050 job from the $59,310 one.

What changes is the system the documenting happens in. O*NET lists Epic Systems, eClinicalWorks and MEDITECH among the technologies used in the occupation, alongside appointment scheduling, billing, and diagnostic and procedural coding software. A Medical Assistant who has charted in Epic inside a hospital outpatient department carries a line on the resume that a small physician's office often cannot offer, and the named system is the part of the experience that transfers cleanly to the next employer. O*NET places the occupation in Job Zone Three, medium preparation needed, with an SVP range of 6.0 to under 7.0: vocational training, an associate's degree, or related on-the-job experience.

The skills O*NET scores highest in that same profile are the ones hardest to put a number against. Active listening and speaking both rate 72, reading comprehension 69, critical thinking 66, monitoring 63. A resume can say "Epic" and a hiring manager knows what that means; a resume that says "active listening" tells them nothing they can check. That asymmetry is why the concrete items - the EHR you charted in, the specialty you worked in, whether you drew blood or ran the front desk as well - do the work on the page, and the softer items do the work in the interview.

How long the entry route takes

BLS describes the usual path as a postsecondary program - a medical assistant certificate or an associate's degree - running one to two years at a community college, vocational school, technical school or university, covering medical terminology, anatomy and pharmacology alongside a supervised practicum. The second path is on-the-job training or an apprenticeship for people without postsecondary education, which BLS says may take several months depending on the facility.

Two entry routes, one median. The Handbook does not publish separate wages for the certificate holder and the person trained on the floor, which is a real limit on any advice about which to choose. What it does establish is the ceiling on time: nobody is asked for four years to start this job, and the typical entry education for the whole occupation stays a postsecondary nondegree award.

Is $45,690 good pay for a medical assistant?

It is the middle, and against the neighbors it is low. BLS's own list of similar occupations puts dental assistants at a $48,070 median and licensed practical nurses at $64,400, both from the same May 2025 round. Measured against the entry requirement - a postsecondary certificate that typically takes one to two years - $45,690 is the going rate rather than a bargain or a penalty.

Which nearby titles pay more

All eleven occupations BLS lists as similar to medical assistants, with its May 2025 median annual pay for each. These are separate occupations, not seniority levels inside one.

Read the education column before the pay column. Licensed practical and licensed vocational nurses enter on a postsecondary nondegree award - the same category BLS assigns to medical assistants - and earn a median of $64,400, which is $18,710 more. That is the largest number in this post. The route to it is an LPN program, not a title change inside a clinic, and BLS says nothing about how long people take to make that move or how many do.

The other direction is just as useful. Pharmacy technicians earn $45,750, sixty dollars above the medical assistant median, on a typical entry education of a high school diploma. Phlebotomists earn $45,230, which is $460 below; psychiatric technicians and aides earn $45,100, $590 below. Three titles, three different training routes, and a spread of $650 between the top and bottom of them. A Medical Assistant weighing a sideways move to any of the three is, on the national medians, not moving their pay at all. Dental hygienists at $98,100 sit in the same list but on an associate's degree, which makes them a different training route rather than a next step.

How fast is the occupation growing?

BLS projects employment of medical assistants to grow 13 percent from 2025 to 2035, which it calls much faster than the average for all occupations, with about 109,700 openings a year on average across that decade. Against 833,900 people employed in 2025, that is real growth and a large volume of ordinary turnover being backfilled at the same time. For a Medical Assistant, the practical meaning is that the openings exist in quantity; the pay range above is what they are advertising inside.

One caution, because this is where salary posts go wrong. O*NET still publishes the previous projection round for 31-9092.00 - 2024 to 2034, with 112,300 projected annual openings and 811,000 employed. Those figures are not comparable with the Handbook's 2025 to 2035 numbers, and the smaller opening count in the newer round is not evidence of a slowdown. It is a different vintage of the same forecast. Pick one round and stay inside it for the length of an argument.

What these numbers do not tell you

Three gaps, and each one changes what you should do with the rest of the post.

There is no certification premium in this data. The Handbook says that although most states do not require certification, some states require a medical assistant to graduate from an accredited program, be licensed or certified, or meet other prerequisites in order to practice, and that employers may prefer or require certification regardless; some also ask for Basic Life Support certification. It stops there. It publishes no wage for a certified medical assistant against an uncertified one, so a dollar figure for what a certificate adds is not coming from BLS, whoever is quoting it. Check your own state's licensing agency for the rule; check nobody's blog for the premium.

There is no local number in the Handbook. Every figure on this page is national, and the Handbook page for 31-9092 publishes no state or metropolitan median at all. BLS does still produce them: the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program publishes May 2025 state and metropolitan area wage tables as downloadable files. They are files, not a page - a Medical Assistant who wants the median for their own metro has to open a spreadsheet to get it, and the number they find there is an OEWS estimate, not the Handbook figure quoted above.

There is no experience curve either. The percentiles show a $23,260 spread, and nothing in the source attributes any share of it to years worked rather than to industry, employer size, hours, or state. The 90th percentile is not what you earn after ten years. It is what the top tenth earned, for reasons this table does not explain.

If you are applying for this role

Three specifics.

Search the adjacent titles, not only your own. O*NET names dental assistants, nursing assistants, licensed practical nurses, medical records specialists, registered nurses and ophthalmic medical technicians as related occupations for 31-9092.00, and employers post across those boundaries with overlapping duty lists. Searching "medical assistant" alone hides postings you already qualify for.

Aim inside $36,050 to $59,310, and know which end a posting sits at. If the employer is an outpatient care center or a hospital, the relevant industry median is $48,560 or $46,910. If it is a physician's office, it is $45,520. Bring the setting-specific figure into the conversation instead of the national one, because it is the number that describes the job in front of you.

Ask what the employer counts as. Hospital outpatient department, independent urgent care, or a physician's office - that one answer predicts where an offer lands better than the job description does, and it is a fair thing to ask a recruiter on a first call.

Then apply to more than one of them, because the industry gap only pays you if you are in front of the other industry. If you are retyping the same certificate, clinical hours and immunization record into portal after portal, HeroApply fills the application from your resume.