Where Do Audiologists Work? Every Practice Setting Compared

Two datasets answer the question, and they measure different populations.

BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook reports the largest employers of audiologists as offices of physicians (26%), offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists and audiologists (26%), hospitals (16%) and educational services (10%).

The pairing with the settings below is our reading of the row names.

ENT groups are physician practices, so they land in the offices-of-physicians row.

An independent audiology practice is an office of audiologists, so it lands in the row named for offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists, and audiologists.

ASHA's 2025 profile counts a different population: ASHA-certified audiologists, of whom ASHA represented 14,296 at year-end 2025.

In that profile, 76.2% of certified audiologists work in health care settings, 6.6% in schools and 5.6% in colleges and universities.

ASHA's health care split runs hospital 30.0% and nonresidential health care 45.5% — the latter including 11.9% in private physicians' offices and 7.1% in audiologists' or speech-language pathologists' offices.

The two datasets count different populations in different ways, so treat each as its own source and never add the shares together.

The rest of this page walks the map setting by setting.

For the profession itself — the degree, the license and the day-to-day work — start with the audiologist career guide.

Private-practice audiology takes more than one shape: the independent practice owned or joined by audiologists, and audiology services embedded in an ENT physician group.

BLS's split mirrors that pairing — offices of physicians and offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists and audiologists are the two largest employer categories, at 26% of audiologist jobs each.

ASHA's profile reads the same territory two ways.

By work setting, 11.9% of ASHA-certified audiologists work in a private physician's office and 7.1% in an audiologist's or speech-language pathologist's office.

By working arrangement, ASHA's profile counts 32.1% of audiologists working full- or part-time in private practice — 26.1% full time and 6.0% part time.

Private practice in ASHA's profile includes employees of practices, not only owners, so the figure is not an ownership rate.

BLS's May 2025 industry medians put offices of physicians at $92,620 and offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists and audiologists at $81,730 — the two lower figures among the four largest industries.

The ENT-embedded side of this setting has its own guide: the ENT and hospital medical audiologist hub covers diagnostic audiology inside physician groups and hospitals.

Hospitals account for 16% of audiologist jobs in BLS's industry split, and ASHA's 2025 profile puts 30.0% of ASHA-certified audiologists in hospitals.

The industry medians run higher here, too: BLS's May 2025 data lists hospitals at $103,700 — the highest of the four largest audiologist industries.

Nearby medical settings show up in the OEWS industry rows, where outpatient care centers employed 720 audiologists at a median of $132,390.

BLS publishes these smaller industry cells with high relative standard errors, so read that count and median as directional rather than precise.

The work is team-based medical audiology.

BLS notes audiologists may work with audiology assistants — a role BLS classifies as a type of medical assistant.

Specialty service lines sit here too.

Cochlear implant care is one: VA alone provides cochlear implant services at more than 125 sites, and the medical-side ENT and hospital guide covers that lane — diagnostics, implants and vestibular work — in depth.

VA's audiology program describes VA as the largest employer of audiologists in the United States, with nearly 1,400 audiologists — an employer claim from VA's own program page, checked in October 2026.

The VA audiologist guide maps that career in detail.

The footprint is national: VA audiology services are available at more than 650 VA sites of care, and VA provides cochlear implant services at more than 125 sites.

The staffing model is layered.

VHA audiology employs nearly 400 health technicians working under licensed audiologists' supervision — many hold CAOHC's COHC designation — and trains over 150 graduate trainees under the same supervision model.

Two more structural facts shape the job.

VA provides hearing technology through national contracts with the top five hearing aid manufacturers, and veterans enrolled in VA care can schedule audiology directly without a referral from primary care.

Licensing follows the employee into federal service: VA's audiology fact sheet, last updated December 2022, states that all VA audiologists are required to maintain a state license.

Other federal agencies hire under a different rulebook.

OPM's qualification standard for its speech-language pathology and audiology series sets the bar for audiologist positions at those agencies.

It requires a graduate degree with 18 semester hours in audiology with approved clinical practice from a CAA-accredited program, plus a full, current and unrestricted license from any one state, DC, Puerto Rico or a US territory.

VA sets its own qualification standard, which our research did not review, so treat the OPM standard as the rule for other federal agencies — not for VA.

On the uniformed services, our research did not reach or verify branch-specific audiology role and qualification rules, so confirm military requirements with each service's medical recruiting pages.

Educational services round out BLS's four largest employers at 10% of audiologist jobs, and ASHA's profile counts 6.6% of ASHA-certified audiologists in schools.

The wage picture sits mid-pack: BLS's May 2025 medians list educational services at $98,110.

The narrower OEWS row for elementary and secondary schools counted 860 audiologists at a median of $97,790 — another smaller cell with high relative standard error.

The employment shape differs from clinic settings.

BLS notes that some audiologists, such as those contracted by a school system, travel between multiple facilities — the itinerant shape of school-contracted audiology.

Early intervention is the neighboring child-facing lane: the EHDI benchmarks call for newborn hearing screening by 1 month of age, audiological diagnosis by 3 months and entry into early intervention by 6 months.

The schools setting also has its own named role — the educational audiologist, covered in depth in that role's guide.

Retail hearing care spans national chains, franchise stores and warehouse club hearing centers — settings organized around hearing aid dispensing.

BLS's OEWS rows put 1,370 audiologist jobs in health and personal care retailers (NAICS 456100), at a median of $87,990.

OEWS counts wage-and-salary jobs only, and BLS flags these smaller industry cells with high relative standard errors.

Warehouse clubs read differently in the data.

The closest BLS industry cell to Costco and Sam's Club hearing centers is general merchandise retailers (NAICS 455000), which includes warehouse clubs.

That cell counts 3,640 hearing aid specialists (SOC 29-2092) at a median of $77,310 — and our OEWS industry extract carries no audiologist row for it at all.

Costco's own published pay-range sheet lists two hearing-center titles — Licensed Hearing Aid Dispenser and Licensed Senior Hearing Aid Specialist (management) — with no separate audiologist title on it.

Titles and pay in retail are employer-specific, so read a chain's own careers pages and dated postings rather than assuming one industry pattern.

Three employer groups hire audiologists away from patient care: manufacturers, occupational hearing conservation and academia.

Manufacturers hire audiologists off the clinic floor.

The documented example in our research is Starkey, whose careers page features audiologist/clinical-research and trainer roles that teach hearing professionals to use its technology.

The manufacturer roles guide covers the sales and territory career path.

Occupational hearing conservation is the industrial lane.

OSHA requires employers to run a hearing conservation program once employee noise exposure reaches the action level — an 8-hour time-weighted average of 85 dBA.

CAOHC, which offers a Certified Professional Supervisor credential for the role, names the professional supervisor of the audiometric monitoring program as the audiologist, otolaryngologist or physician.

The industrial audiologist guide covers that career.

Academia is the smallest named slice in ASHA's profile: 5.6% of ASHA-certified audiologists work in colleges and universities.

ASHA's split of certified audiologists by primary role runs 77.9% clinical service providers, 7.0% administrators, 4.2% college or university professors and 1.6% researchers.

Pay is one comparator across settings, and the four largest BLS industries give a clean like-for-like set because all four medians come from the same May 2025 wage table for audiologists.

Medians by industry run $103,700 in hospitals, $98,110 in educational services, $92,620 in offices of physicians and $81,730 in offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists and audiologists.

Hospitals sit at the top of the four and therapy-and-audiology offices at the bottom, but a median describes an industry, not an offer — individual pay moves with role, experience, region and employment type.

Two smaller OEWS rows round out the map: outpatient care centers (720 jobs, $132,390 median) and temporary help services (180 jobs, $132,150 median), the industry row for staffing agencies.

BLS flags both with high relative standard errors, so treat them as directional.

Delivery modes cut across the settings rather than replacing them: short-term placements run through staffing agencies — the temporary help services row above — and tele-audiology delivers parts of the job remotely.

ASHA's teleaudiology staffing description pairs a remote audiologist with on-site support staff, a model ASHA says is currently used only in the VA health care system.

Fit is about the work more than the wage table.

Four questions sort the map:

• Who do you want to serve? Children point toward schools and pediatric settings, veterans toward the VA, and medically complex caseloads toward hospitals and ENT.
• Do you want ownership? Private practice is the setting where practice ownership lives.
• Structure or autonomy? Hospitals and the VA carry institutional schedules and benefits; independent practices trade that structure for control of the calendar and the business.
• How central is dispensing to you? Retail settings are organized around the hearing aid cycle; hospital and school roles are organized around diagnostics and services.

Career information, not licensing, legal, medical, clinical, billing or coding advice — confirm licensing and qualification requirements with the state board, VA or federal agency named above.