When starting your career as a Medical Assistant it is important to know the current Salary and Wages in the field so that you can negotiate your Medical assistant Salary when Applying for a job. There’s a lot of factors involved in determining the payscale of a particular person. Please use this information as a guide rather as the sole determining factor of what you can expect to get once hired as a Medical Assistant.
If you searched Government websites, you will know that the Occupational Number for Medical Assistants is 31-9092. Medical Assistants are considered one of the fastest growing profession in the next decade. This is because of the increasing number of physician health clinics and aging population of baby boomers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the starting salary wage of Medical assistants fall below $15, $14.31 to be exact. And the Annual or Yearly Wage is about $29, 760. These number came up with a very low relative standard error (RSE) which basically means that these numbers have very little room for error. Please take note that these data is dated May 2010. It has already been almost 1 year so the numbers could have changed a little bit. Nevertheless, this is the latest information from the National Government that I can find.
And Here’s the Percentile Wages in A Nice Graph:
And if you wanted to see the Percentil Wages for the ANNUAL MEDICAL Assistant Salary breakdown, check this out:
As you can see from the Graphs and information provided above, the mean annual wage of Medical Assistants are in the $28,860 range. It is not bad, considering that Medical assistants is currently not a regulated or licensed profession. You can become a Medical Assistant and learn from the job, but I would not suggest that you do that because of the competition today. And most employers would require either at least a few years experience as a Medical Assistant, A graduate of an Accredited Medical Assisting program and a person who is either a Certified Medical Assistant or Registered Medical Assistant.
There’s a lot of Medical Assistant Schools in your Area. If you need more information on accredited Medical Assistant programs, find the nearest learning facility near your area by entering your ZIP code below this article. There are no fees collected when requesting for information.
Now, let me share with you some of the industries where Medical Assistants are mostly employed.
According to the BLS website, the Highest recorded Industry that hires medical assistants is in the OFFICES of PHYSICIANS. There is about 13.95% of people employed within Physician Offices. Their hourly salary rate is not bad at $14.48 with a higher than National Average Annual Mean wage of about $30,110.
The reason for this is that most likely physicians are getting more patients and are now requiring extra help without hiring another nurse. A nurse would be overqualified to do administrative work, and the Medical Assistants would be the perfect solution for their problem.
But most Physicians hire Medical Assistant that have the proper credentials and certification. Also if you have more experience and education you can probably negotiate for a higher wage because it would help you justify that you are better equipped for the job and less training and hand holding will be done.
At a huge margin with the OFFICES of PHYSICIANS, the next industry that employs Med Assistants is the GENERAL MEDICAL and SURGICAL Hospitals. Yes, these big hospitals hire Medical Assistants too. Most likely they would be placed in the Ambulatory or Out Patient Department because those areas are fast paced and a helping hand would be deeply appreciated.
About 1.27% of Medical Assistants are Hired in this Industry. It’s a small number probably because most Hospitals have Nurses, Nursing Aides and other Ancillary Personnel which makes the work of Medical Assistants redundant.
The next huge percentage of Medical Assistants go to OFFICES of OTHER HEALTH PRACTITIONERS. This could include Ambulatory Surgery Centers or ASC, Dental Clinics, etc. The percentage of people in this Industry is about 8.06%. But the mean hourly wage is only $12.90. It is lower compared with other Industries. This could be because of the different work conditions in this industry.
