Travel Medical Assistant Salary by State 2026 (Pay Data)

TL;DR: The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures medical assistants at a national average of $22.17 an hour, $46,120 a year across 817,870 jobs: the second-largest of the ten clinical jobs this site measures, and the lowest-paid of them. Pay for the same job runs from $17.40 an hour in Louisiana to $28.17 in Washington, a 1.62× gap. Two findings worth planning around: Washington is the only jurisdiction where the bottom tenth of medical assistants already earns more than the national average, and the step from this job to a practical-nurse license is worth between 1.26× and 1.69× depending on the state you measure it in.

What These Numbers Measure

This is the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025, the latest one published. The line for this job is occupation code 31-9092, Medical Assistants, measured in doctors’ offices, hospitals and outpatient clinics in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

That one federal line is also the limit of what anyone can honestly tell you about certifications. There is no separate wage for a CMA, an RMA or a CCMA anywhere in the release: the survey asks about the job you are paid for, not the certificate on your wall. Any page that prints a table of pay by certification is not reading federal data, and it is worth asking what it is reading instead.

What this page is not: a list of travel agency offers. No survey tags medical assistants as travel or staff, agencies do not publish their rates anywhere public, and every page that quotes a clean “travel pays this much more” percentage has made it up. You get the measured baseline, then where the travel money actually comes from, which is the reimbursement line rather than the hourly.

The baseline still decides your offer, because a facility prices a travel contract against its own payroll. $28.17 an hour in Washington and $17.40 in Louisiana is not a difference in negotiating skill. It is this dataset.

What the State Columns Say

The ordering runs from Washington at $28.17 an hour ($58,590 a year, $1,014 on a 36-hour week) down to Louisiana at $17.40 ($36,180 a year, $626 a week). One 13-week contract at those two ends differs by $5,041 in taxable pay before a dollar of stipend, and 21 of the 51 jurisdictions clear the national average of $46,120.

• The best average state is not the best ceiling state. Washington leads on mean pay at $28.17, and it also has the highest floor in the country: its bottom tenth earns $22.38, which is above the $22.17 national average. That happens in exactly one jurisdiction out of 51. California is the opposite shape: its top tenth earns $37.16 ($77,300 a year), the highest line in the file, while its median sits at $23.88, sixth on the median column. A list that calls one of these two “the best paying state” is answering a different question than the one you asked.
• The bottom of the table is a photo finish. Louisiana is last at $17.40 and Mississippi is second-last at $17.42: 2 cents an hour apart, which is about $9 across a 13-week contract at 36 hours a week. Treat those two as one price band, not as a ranking you can move between.
• How common the job is says nothing about what it pays. The five densest markets for medical assistants are Maine (7.0 per 1,000 workers), Kentucky, Florida, Arizona and Alaska, and on the pay column they land at ranks 12, 45, 33, 22 and 2 of 51. A spread that wide makes headcount useless as a pay signal: Maine pays $23.56 while Alaska pays $27.23, second on the whole table.
• Big states mean more openings, not more money. California, Texas, Florida and New York employ 37 percent of every medical assistant in the country: 117,060, 75,340, 66,110 and 40,710 jobs. Texas alone has 75,340 of them and pays $19.83 an hour, rank 44 of 51 on the rate.
• Small jurisdictions can flatter a state. Just 9 of the 51 have fewer than 3,000 medical assistants, down to North Dakota with 600 jobs: the thinnest market in the file, rank 19 on pay at $22.53. District of Columbia is the sharper caution: 2,260 jobs, fourth on mean pay, and a top-tenth rate of $36.97 that is second in the country. A market that small can hold a high rank without being a place you can job-shop in.
• Read the top-tenth column as the test for an offer. The mean is the middle of a state’s payroll, and in 34 of the 51 it sits above the median, a handful of high earners pulls it there. California is the clearest case: its average is $2.61 an hour above its typical worker. An hourly that clears a state’s top-tenth line puts you inside its top ten percent on measured pay; one that does not means the reimbursement side is doing all the work.

What the Next License Adds

Every medical assistant eventually meets the same advice: go get your practical-nurse license. The same release measures both jobs in every state, so the gap can be stated instead of argued. Nationally a licensed practical nurse averages $32.24 an hour against $22.17 here, which is 1.45×. Inside one state it is a much wider trade than that single number suggests:

• Smallest as a multiple: Minnesota pays a practical nurse $31.20 an hour against $24.84 for a medical assistant: 1.26×.
• Largest as a multiple: Nevada pays $35.81 against $21.24: 1.69×.
• Smallest in money per contract: South Dakota, where the step adds least: $6.16 an hour between the two lines, which is $222 on a 36-hour week and $2,883 over 13 weeks.
• Largest in money per contract: Rhode Island, where staying put costs most: $15.66 an hour between the same two licenses, $7,329 across a contract. One license, one survey, and the two states differ by $4,446 over 13 weeks.

Two readings follow, and they point the same way. The step is worth least where medical assisting already pays comparatively well: across the ten smallest-gap states a medical assistant averages $22.41 an hour, against $21.71 in the ten states where the license adds most. And in 7 states the average medical assistant wage already beats what the bottom tenth of practical nurses earns nationally, at $23.91. The step is real money; it is not automatic, and where you take it changes the size of it. All of these are the published wage lines for two different occupations measured on different people: a comparison between pay scales, not a promise about one person’s raise.

For the neighboring jobs, all measured in the same May 2025 release:

Occupation	Median per hour	Mean per hour	Against this job	Top 10 percent	US jobs
Medical assistant (this page)	$21.97	$22.17	1.00×	$59,310	817,870
Emergency medical technician	$21.38	$22.52	1.02×	$62,500	180,510
Licensed practical nurse	$30.96	$32.24	1.45×	$83,440	648,410
Surgical technologist	$31.08	$33.03	1.49×	$96,940	117,460
Radiologic technologist	$38.52	$40.31	1.82×	$118,660	230,490
Registered nurse	$46.90	$48.76	2.20×	$137,470	3,379,720

The row worth staring at is the second one. A national average of $22.52 against $22.17 here is thirty-five cents, and the two jobs trade places across the map: an emergency medical technician is the better-paid line in 26 of the 51 jurisdictions, and the medical assistant line is higher in the other 25. The gap between the two swings both ways: Hawaii is where the EMT code pays more, by $8.84 an hour, and Montana is where the medical assistant line leads, by $4.69. If you are choosing between those two trainings, that is a state question, not a career question. And in all 51 jurisdictions a surgical technologist (someone who holds no nursing license at all) earns a higher average than a medical assistant, $33.03 against $22.17 nationally.

How a Travel Medical Assistant Package Adds Up

Two components, taxed in completely different ways:

1. Taxable hourly: your state’s figure from the table, times scheduled hours. At the national mean, a 36-hour week is $798 of taxable pay and a 13-week contract is $10,376.
2. Non-taxable reimbursements: meals and housing up to the federal ceiling for your county and season: $68 to $92 a day for meals, $113 a night for lodging as the standard, up to $499 a night in Park City, Utah. This line does not move with your hourly and does not care whether you hold a nursing license at all, which is why two assistants at the same rate can keep very different amounts.

Worked at 36 hours a week on the costliest federal destination inside each state: a ceiling, not a likely offer:

State	Mean per hour	36-hour week	13-week taxable pay	Lodging per night	Meals per day	Stipend ceiling per week
Washington	$28.17	$1,014	$13,184	$255 in Seattle	$92	$2,429
California	$26.49	$954	$12,397	$325 in San Francisco	$92	$2,919
District of Columbia	$26.39	$950	$12,351	$295	$92	$2,709
Louisiana	$17.40	$626	$8,143	$188 in New Orleans	$80	$1,876
Mississippi	$17.42	$627	$8,153	$146 in Oxford	$68	$1,498
Alabama	$17.68	$636	$8,274	$221 in Gulf Shores	$74	$2,065

Read that last column as a maximum: it assumes a hotel at the ceiling every night and meal money all seven days, in the single costliest town in that state. Most of the map sits on the standard rate, where a full week tops out at $1,267. Its practical use is a check: when an agency’s housing line sits far below the ceiling for the town you are going to, the room to ask is measurable before you sign, and it is the same room a registered nurse gets. At this pay the reimbursement line is not a rounding error: a full week at the standard federal ceiling is $1,267, which is more than the $798 a 36-hour week pays at the national mean. Two people on the same hourly can therefore take home very different amounts depending on the town, and the town is the part you can sometimes negotiate.

Whether that reimbursement stays untaxed has nothing to do with your job title and everything to do with three tests: is per diem taxable walks them through, the per diem rates table has each destination’s ceiling, and the travel nurse paycheck calculator turns a specific offer into what reaches your bank.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which state pays travel medical assistants the most?

On measured wages, Washington: $28.17 an hour, $58,590 a year, and its bottom tenth still earns $22.38, the only floor in the country above the national average. Its costliest listed destination, Seattle, sits at $255 a night against the $113 federal standard, so run the housing math before treating it as the answer. Alaska is behind that at $27.23 and California at $26.49.

Is this the same as CNA pay?

No, and the difference matters if you are reading a job ad. This page is occupation 31-9092, Medical Assistants. Nursing assistants are counted in a separate occupation this page does not carry, so no number here can be quoted as CNA pay. Employers do blur the two titles in postings, which is why the code on this table is worth checking against the duties in the contract you are being shown.

Does a CMA or RMA certification raise pay?

Nothing in the federal data can answer that, because the survey does not record certifications: it records the job. The honest position is that the effect has not been measured, not that it is zero and not that it is a few dollars an hour.

Is a travel contract worth more than a staff job?

No dataset answers that, and you should distrust a page that claims one does. What is measurable is the shape: the hourly on a travel offer is priced against the same facility payroll this table measures, and the contract then adds expense reimbursement that staff wages do not include, so total comp can rise without the hourly moving at all.

Do medical assistants get the same stipend as travel nurses?

The federal ceiling is set by destination, not by license level, so an assistant in the same town has the same lodging and meal line as a registered nurse. The tax tests are identical too. What differs is the hourly underneath it: a registered nurse averages $48.76 an hour against $22.17 here, which is 2.20×.

Is the practical-nurse license worth the time?

On these numbers the answer is state-specific, which is why a flat yes is useless. Nationally the license is worth 1.45×, but inside one state the multiple runs from 1.26× in Minnesota to 1.69× in Nevada, and in dollars the same step is worth $222 a week in South Dakota against $7,329 a contract in Rhode Island. If you earn the Washington average of $28.17 an hour, you are already above what the bottom tenth of practical nurses earns nationally, at $23.91.

Is this 2025 or 2026 data?

Wages are the BLS May 2025 release, the newest published; federal wage data runs about a year behind. Reimbursement ceilings are FY2027 rates, effective 1 October 2026 through 30 September 2027. Those two clocks are what make a contract straddling 1 October get measured against two different rate files.

Sources we checked

Every figure on this page came from one of the documents below, not from another blog. Links checked 10 October 2026.

• BLS OEWS wage data, interactive tables: The same May 2025 state and national estimates, filterable by occupation and area.
• BLS OEWS data tables, all releases: The May 2025 national and state release pages behind every wage line on this page.
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 state estimates: The state-by-state wage table every hourly figure on this page is read from.
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook - Medical Assistants: The handbook line for SOC 31-9092 clinical support work.