Travel Surgical Tech Pay by State 2026: Real Hourly Rates

TL;DR: The Bureau of Labor Statistics measures surgical technologists at a national average of $33.03 an hour, $68,710 a year across 117,460 jobs. The travel decision here is a state decision: the best-paying state gives $40.30 an hour and the worst $24.36, a 1.65× gap on an identical job. Two things make this occupation different from nursing: the top of this table is Massachusetts, not California, and the step from technologist to registered nurse is worth between 1.30× and 1.81× depending on which state you measure it in. Both are on the table below.

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 29-2055, Surgical Technologists (the scrub, circulator and first-assist role) measured in hospitals, ambulatory surgery centers and eye clinics in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

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 No survey tags technologists as travel or staff, agencies do not publish their rates anywhere public, and every page that quotes a clean “travel pays this much more” percentage has made it up.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

The baseline still decides your offer, because a recruiter prices against the theatre’s own payroll. $40.30 an hour in Massachusetts and $24.36 in Alabama is not a difference in negotiating skill. It is this dataset.

What the State Columns Say

The ordering runs from Massachusetts at $40.30 an hour ($83,820 a year, $1,451 on a 36-hour week) down to Alabama at $24.36 ($50,680 a year, $877 a week). One 13-week contract at those two ends differs by $7,460 in taxable pay before a dollar of stipend, and 21 of the 51 jurisdictions clear the national average of $68,710.

• The top of this table is not the top of the nurse table. Massachusetts leads surgical technology at $40.30, with California at $39.81 and New York behind that. On the nurse hub the order is California first and Massachusetts only fifth. Sorting your search by what you have heard about nursing pay gets this wrong.
• Hawaii is the clearest example of why the average lies. It has the highest median hourly in the country at $39.73, yet only ranks 12 of 51 on the average at $35.48, because its bottom tenth earns $18.93. Sort the median column as well as the mean.
• The work is concentrated. California, Texas, Florida and New York employ 32 percent of every technologist in the country: 11,920, 10,160, 9,120 and 6,540 jobs. At the other end, 11 jurisdictions have fewer than 500 of them, down to Vermont with 140.
• Density and pay do not line up. South Dakota has the most technologists per 1,000 workers at 1.3, paying $28.07. Vermont has the fewest, 0.5 per 1,000, and pays $31.03: below the national average, so a thin market here is not a premium.

What a Nursing License Actually Adds

Every surgical technologist eventually meets the same advice: go get your RN. The same release measures both jobs in every state, so the gap can be stated instead of argued. Nationally a registered nurse averages $48.76 an hour against $33.03 here, which is 1.48×.

Inside one state it is a much narrower trade than people assume:

• Smallest: Minnesota pays a nurse $49.72 an hour against $38.30 for a technologist: 1.30×, and that is one of the higher-paying states for this job already.
• Largest: California pays a nurse $72.25 an hour against $39.81 for a technologist: 1.81×. Same state, same hospital, and the whole gap is a nursing license.

The honest reading: the license is worth real money everywhere, but its size swings by about a third across the country. And the two ladders overlap. Massachusetts pays a technologist $40.30 an hour, more than the national bottom-tenth rate for a registered nurse at $33.14. Where the travel package pays is the reimbursement line, which needs no extra degree and is identical for both jobs. For the neighboring roles, all measured in the same May 2025 release:

Occupation	Median per hour	Mean per year	Top 10 percent	US jobs
Surgical technologist (this page)	$31.08	$68,710	$96,940	117,460
Radiologic technologist	$38.52	$83,840	$118,660	230,490
Licensed practical nurse	$30.96	$67,050	$83,440	648,410
Respiratory therapist	$39.56	$87,300	$118,050	139,790
Registered nurse	$46.90	$101,420	$137,470	3,379,720
Medical assistant	$21.97	$46,120	$59,310	817,870

How a Travel Surgical Tech 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 $1,189 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, up to $499 in the priciest listed destination. This line does not move with your hourly, which is 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, 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
Massachusetts	$40.30	$1,451	$18,860	$487 in Nantucket	$92	$4,053
California	$39.81	$1,433	$18,631	$325 in San Francisco	$92	$2,919
New York	$39.42	$1,419	$18,449	$358 in New York City	$92	$3,150
Mississippi	$25.57	$921	$11,967	$146 in Oxford	$68	$1,498
West Virginia	$25.14	$905	$11,766	$128 in Charles Town	$68	$1,372
Alabama	$24.36	$877	$11,400	$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 as a floor: if an agency offers housing far under your city’s federal ceiling, you now know the gap exists before you sign.

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 surgical techs the most?

On measured wages, Massachusetts: $40.30 an hour, $83,820 a year. Its costliest listed destination, Nantucket, holds the second highest federal lodging ceiling in the country at $487 a night, so run the housing maths before treating it as the answer. California has the highest top-tenth rate at $55.64 an hour, which is the number that shows what the top of the job earns there.

Is a travel surgical tech 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 theatre 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 travel techs get the same stipend as travel nurses?

The federal ceiling is set by destination, not by profession, so a technologist in the same town has the same lodging and meal line as a nurse. The tax tests are also the same. What differs is the hourly underneath it: the nurse hub has that comparison for all ten clinical roles.

Do specialties like CVOR or neuro pay more?

The federal survey reports one occupation for all of them, so there is no public number for a CVOR-versus-general differential and this page will not invent one. What is real is that specialty differentials sit inside individual employer pay scales, so the only place one becomes visible is on an offer. The measurable step up in this table is the top-tenth column.

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 that straddles 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 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 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 Outlook Handbook - Surgical Assistants and Technologists: The handbook line for SOC 29-2055 theatre work, median pay $64,700 for 2025.