Travel Radiology Tech Salary by State 2026 (Real Pay Data)

TL;DR: The Bureau of Labor Statistics pays radiologic technologists a national average of $40.31 an hour, $83,840 a year, across 230,490 jobs. For someone taking travel assignments, the state you pick matters more than the modality you own: the top-paying state pays $56.71 an hour and the bottom-paying one $28.41 an hour for the same license, a 2.00× gap. 18 of the 51 jurisdictions pay above that national average wage, which is a fairer spread than nursing gets. Below: the state-by-state table, what CT and MRI pay differentials really look like in the data, and how a 13-week imaging contract adds up.

What These Numbers Measure

This is the Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey for May 2025, the newest release. The line it publishes for imaging technologists is occupation code 29-2034, Radiologic Technologists and Technicians, covering X-ray, CT, mammography and fluoro work in hospitals, clinics, imaging centers and urgent care, in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

What it is not: a list of travel agency rates. No survey tags imaging technologists as travel or staff. The BLS does not record staffing model, agency bill rates are not public, and anyone quoting a tidy “travel pays N percent more” figure is inventing it. This page gives you the measured baseline and then shows where the travel money actually comes from, which is the stipend line rather than the hourly.

The baseline still decides the offer. A recruiter prices against the hospital’s own payroll for the modality, and the hospital’s payroll is what this table measures. $56.71 an hour in California and $28.41 in Mississippi is not a difference in negotiating skill: it is this dataset.

The Spread, Not Just the Average

The ordering runs from California at $56.71 an hour ($117,950 a year, $2,042 on a 36-hour week) down to Mississippi at $28.41 ($59,090 a year, $1,023 a week). One 13-week contract at those two ends differs by $13,244 in taxable pay before stipends, and that is the same certification doing the same job in two different tax jurisdictions.

Four things the state columns say that a national average hides:

• 18 of 51 jurisdictions beat the national figure of $83,840. Imaging pay is more evenly distributed than nursing pay: the all-roles nurse table on this site has only 12 of 51 above its own national average. A travel imaging tech has a wider middle to work with, so the “you have to go to California” logic is weaker here.
• The busiest states for the job are not the richest ones. West Virginia employs 2.6 technologists for every 1,000 workers, the densest in the country, at $35.47 an hour. District of Columbia has the thinnest staffing ratio at 0.9 per 1,000 and pays $47.53 an hour, the sixth highest on the board. Demand and money are two different searches.
• Most of the work is in four states. California, Texas, Florida and New York between them employ 31 percent of every imaging technologist in the country: 20,900, 20,250, 16,470 and 13,450 jobs. At the other end, three states employ fewer than 500 of them in total: Alaska with 370, Wyoming with 430, Vermont with 470. Travel imaging contracts are mostly written in the first group.
• The average can hide a state’s real range. Hawaii pays a median of $48.89 an hour but a bottom-tenth rate of $18.82: 2.60× apart inside one state. Check the top-10-per-cent column as well as the mean before you move for a number.

What About CT, MRI and Mammography Pay?

This is the question the search results get wrong most often. There is no separate federal wage line for a CT technologist, a mammography technologist, an X-ray technologist or a fluoro technologist: those all sit inside one occupation, 29-2034, and every state figure on this page already includes the people doing those modalities. MRI is the exception. The same May 2025 release reports Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologists as their own occupation, 29-2035: a $45.91 median hour, $95,480 median year and $96,120 mean year across 43,390 US jobs, with the top tenth above $127,670. That mean is $12,280 a year over the radiologic line this page tables, so an MRI contract is worth pricing on its own. The Occupational Outlook Handbook blends 29-2034 and 29-2035 into one profile and prints $81,390 for the pair, which is how a handbook number and the table on this page can differ and both be correct. A page that shows you a neat CT-versus-X-ray salary table is not quoting the Bureau of Labor Statistics; it is quoting another page that made the numbers up.

What is real: modality differentials exist inside employer pay scales, they are usually worth a few dollars an hour rather than a new salary band, and they are invisible in public data. The honest way to price one is on the offer, not on a website.

What the same release does measure is the neighboring imaging and procedural occupations, so you can see where a cross-training move lands compared with the license you already hold:

Occupation	Median per hour	Mean per year	Top 10 percent	US jobs
Radiologic technologist (this page)	$38.52	$83,840	$118,660	230,490
Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) technologist	$45.91	$96,120	$127,670	43,390
Diagnostic medical sonographer	$46.44	$97,240	$129,370	90,160
Surgical technologist	$31.08	$68,710	$96,940	117,460
Registered nurse	$46.90	$101,420	$137,470	3,379,720
Licensed practical nurse	$30.96	$67,050	$83,440	648,410

Ultrasound is the one measurable step up in the imaging family: a diagnostic medical sonographer’s national median is 1.21× a radiologic technologist’s. Registered nurses average 1.21× the imaging mean, and a surgical technologist sits below this page’s occupation. Those are national averages for staff and travel workers combined, not a promise about what a travel contract pays.

How a Travel Imaging Package Adds Up

Two components, taxed in completely different ways:

1. Taxable hourly: the state figure from the table, times your scheduled hours. At the national imaging mean, a 36-hour week is $1,451 of taxable pay.
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, and up to $499 in the priciest listed destination. This line does not move with your hourly at all, which is exactly why two techs 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 rather than a likely offer:

State	Mean per hour	36-hour week	13-week taxable pay	Lodging per night	Meals per day	Stipend ceiling per week
California	$56.71	$2,042	$26,540	$325 in San Francisco	$92	$2,919
Massachusetts	$49.00	$1,764	$22,932	$487 in Nantucket	$92	$4,053
Washington	$48.51	$1,746	$22,703	$255 in Seattle	$92	$2,429
Louisiana	$31.84	$1,146	$14,901	$188 in New Orleans	$80	$1,876
Alabama	$29.23	$1,052	$13,680	$221 in Gulf Shores	$74	$2,065
Mississippi	$28.41	$1,023	$13,296	$146 in Oxford	$68	$1,498

Read the last column as a maximum, not a target: it assumes a hotel rate 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. The realistic use of this table is as a floor for your negotiation: if an agency is offering you housing well under what the federal ceiling for that city allows, you now know the gap exists.

Whether any of that stipend stays untaxed does not depend on the amount. It depends on three tests, and they are the same tests for a tech as for a nurse: is per diem taxable walks them through, the per diem rates table has every destination’s ceiling, and the travel nurse paycheck calculator turns a specific offer into the figure that reaches your bank. Modality does not change the tax treatment; your tax home does.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which state pays travel radiology techs the most?

On measured wages, California: $56.71 an hour, $117,950 a year, and the top tenth of technologists there earn at least $79.55 an hour. Its costliest listed destination holds the eighth highest federal lodging ceiling in the country, $325 a night in San Francisco, so price the housing before treating it as the answer. Washington ranks third and Oregon fourth, ahead of every state in the Northeast and the Mid-Atlantic except Massachusetts: on this occupation the Pacific Northwest leads, not the traditional nursing states.

How much do travel radiology techs make per week?

Take your state’s mean hourly from the table and multiply by scheduled hours. Nationally that is $1,451 for a 36-hour week of taxable pay, $1,935 for 48 hours, before stipends. Then add the reimbursement line, which is the part the hourly tables on other sites leave out entirely.

Do travel techs earn more than staff techs?

No dataset answers that, and you should distrust a page that claims one does. What is measurable is the structure: a travel contract pays a comparable hourly and then adds expense reimbursement that staff wages do not include. Total comp can be meaningfully higher without the hourly being higher, which is why comparing recruiters on “rate” alone goes wrong.

Is a travel imaging contract worth more than a travel nursing contract?

The measured gap is real but modest: the national RN mean is $48.76 an hour against $40.31 for technologists, 1.21×. Add the stipend structure, which is identical for both, and the difference in a single 13-week contract is smaller than the difference between two states. Picking the state beats picking the license.

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, which take effect 1 October 2026 and run to 30 September 2027. Those two clocks are why a contract straddling 1 October gets 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 - Radiologic and MRI Technologists: The handbook line for SOC 29-2034 imaging work, X-ray through MRI, median pay $81,390 for 2025.