Medical transcriptionists
Salary, job outlook, AI risk & career information
Medical transcriptionists in the United States earn a median salary of $40,410 per year — about $19 per hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Roughly 44K people work in this occupation nationwide, with projected employment growth of -5%.
AI & Automation Risk
Medical transcription is a purely digital, routine information-processing task that has already been heavily impacted by speech recognition. Modern AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) can now handle complex medical terminology, formatting, and summarization with high accuracy, transforming the human role into a diminishing oversight function or eliminating it entirely.
Salary by City — What You Actually Take Home
Real purchasing power = salary adjusted for cost of living. Higher = more money in your pocket.
| City | Local Salary | Cost of Living | Real Purchasing Power |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rapid City, SDBEST VALUE | $53,840 | Below avg (89.2) | $60,386 |
| Norwich-New London-Willimantic, CT | $55,890 | Average (100.4) | $55,642 |
| Jackson, TN | $46,680 | Below avg (85.5) | $54,582 |
| Portland-South Portland, ME | $55,320 | Average (101.9) | $54,311 |
| Hartford-West Hartford-East Hartford, CT | $54,830 | Average (102.7) | $53,365 |
| Evansville, IN | $48,840 | Below avg (91.5) | $53,361 |
| Peoria, IL | $48,160 | Below avg (91.2) | $52,789 |
| Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro--Franklin, TN | $50,400 | Below avg (96.3) | $52,316 |
| Chattanooga, TN-GA | $47,680 | Below avg (91.5) | $52,130 |
| San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA | $57,420 | Above avg (110.4) | $52,000 |
| Appleton, WI | $48,010 | Below avg (92.4) | $51,948 |
| Kingsport-Bristol, TN-VA | $44,790 | Below avg (86.4) | $51,812 |
| Sioux Falls, SD-MN | $46,930 | Below avg (90.6) | $51,781 |
| Madison, WI | $50,310 | Average (97.3) | $51,713 |
| Memphis, TN-MS-AR | $47,470 | Below avg (92.2) | $51,498 |