Hearing aid specialists — also called hearing instrument specialists or hearing aid dispensers — earned a median wage of $65,160 a year in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
That is $31.33 an hour at the median, and the average was $66,370.
Where a specialist lands in the $38,400-to-$94,020 spread reflects the employer, the state and the pay plan behind the offer — and the federal data puts firm numbers on the first two.
Average hearing aid specialist salary
BLS's occupational category for this job is 29-2092, Hearing Aid Specialists.
In the May 2025 Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) release, the median annual wage was $65,160 and the mean was $66,370.
The median is the midpoint: half of employed hearing aid specialists earned more than $65,160 and half earned less.
The mean is the simple average, and it sits above the median because pay at the top end pulls it up.
BLS counted 11,270 employed hearing aid specialists in May 2025.
That count covers wage-and-salary employees only: self-employed practice owners are outside it, and the same occupation category counts supervised trainees and apprentices alongside fully licensed dispensers, because there is no separate BLS code for apprentices.
Two data limits matter before you compare anything to these numbers.
First, BLS's Occupational Outlook Handbook has no detailed profile for this occupation — hearing aid specialists appear only on BLS's Data for Occupations Not Covered in Detail page, with summary figures.
Second, no trade-association pay benchmark sits alongside the federal data in this page's research: we did not find a current International Hearing Society compensation survey for hearing instrument specialists, so the BLS series is the primary national figure this page has.
Growth is the other half of the pay picture.
BLS's Employment Projections for 2025–35 expect hearing aid specialist employment to grow 19.4 percent, from 11,200 in 2025 to 13,400 in 2035, with 900 openings a year on average.
The projection base counts self-employed workers too, while the OEWS count covers employees only — two different statistical series, not two different job markets, which is why the two starting numbers are not interchangeable.
For how this role sits inside the wider hearing care workforce, the site's hearing care industry statistics pull the federal numbers into one place.
Base pay vs total pay with commission
There is no single national pay plan for hearing aid specialists: the federal wage series reports what specialists were paid, not the pay design that produced it.
Some employers advertise commission on top of pay: as of October 2026, HearingLife's careers page offered audiologists and hearing instrument specialists "a competitive salary and strong commission potential", and HearUSA's Hearing Care Provider postings listed "Monthly Commissions" among benefits.
Our research did not confirm draw-based or commission-only plans for this field from a primary source.
If an offer letter does mention a draw, it deserves a plain definition: it is an advance on commissions that future commission earnings repay, so it smooths income week to week without adding to it.
Where a plan ties part of pay to fittings and sales, two postings with the same job title can describe very different earnings potential.
The setting matters too: the industry medians BLS publishes for this occupation differ by employer group — the figures are in the pay-drivers section below.
No data source this page could verify gives the split.
Our research found no primary source publishing how much of a hearing aid specialist's income comes from commission versus base pay, and no current compensation survey from IHS, the International Hearing Society, to fill that gap.
The BLS figures on this page describe the occupation as a whole rather than any one employer's plan.
The published OEWS table reports medians, means and percentiles, and it does not break base pay out from incentive pay — which is exactly why the base-versus-commission split is not something the published wage data settles.
No commission benchmark our research could verify
Hourly pay
The median hearing aid specialist earned $31.33 an hour in May 2025.
That hourly median and the $65,160 annual median describe the same workforce measured two ways, not two different pay tiers.
When a posting quotes an hourly rate, this median is the yardstick.
When an offer quotes a salary, divide before you compare — an hourly figure and an annual figure are easy to weigh against each other only once they are in the same units.
Industry rows move around that national number.
BLS put the median at $37.17 an hour in general merchandise retailers, the sector that includes warehouse clubs.
The median ran $31.51 an hour in health and personal care retailers, the row that includes hearing aid stores and chains.
Neither industry row is specific to any single chain.
The row closest to private audiology and hearing aid practices, offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists, and audiologists, ran $28.84 an hour.
That row mixes professions, and its employment estimate carries a high sampling error — employment of 2,250 with a relative standard error of 20.6 percent — so read it as an approximation rather than a quote for audiology clinics.
Range and top earners
The spread around the median is the real story of this occupation's pay.
In May 2025 the 10th percentile was $38,400, the 25th percentile was $48,390, the 75th percentile was $80,010 and the 90th percentile was $94,020.
| Percentile | Annual wage, May 2025 |
|---|---|
| 10th | $38,400 |
| 25th | $48,390 |
| 50th (median) | $65,160 |
| 75th | $80,010 |
| 90th | $94,020 |
Percentiles are easy to read once you know the convention: at the 25th percentile, a quarter of employed specialists earned less.
At the 90th, 90 percent earned less — so 10 percent earned more than $94,020.
The 90th percentile sits close to six figures, though the published table stops there: how many specialists earned $100,000 or more is not something this data shows.
What it does show is that a quarter of employed specialists earned above $80,010.
Know who is inside and outside these figures.
Trainees and apprentices are counted in the occupation, so the range spans supervised beginners and decades-long dispensers alike; self-employed owners are excluded, and BLS's projections series put self-employment at 0.5 percent of the occupation in 2025.
Owner income is a separate question these wage tables do not answer.
What drives HIS pay
Four factors move an individual specialist's pay.
Two of them, employer type and state, leave traces in the federal data; the pay plan is the one you read from the offer itself.
- Employer type. BLS's industry medians for the same occupation differed sharply in May 2025 — for example, $59,990 in offices of physical, occupational and speech therapists, and audiologists, versus $77,310 in general merchandise retailers. The setting you dispense in is visible in the published medians.
- The pay plan. Where an offer includes commission, as HearingLife's and HearUSA's recruiting pages advertise, the incentive design can change take-home pay from month to month, which is why the employer's plan deserves as much attention as the headline rate.
- The state. BLS publishes state rows for this occupation and they differ: May 2025 state medians ran from $35,110 in West Virginia to $82,990 in New York. The state-by-state tables get their own section below.
- Experience and credentials. BLS's typical entry category for the occupation is a high school diploma or equivalent with moderate-term on-the-job training. The same statistical category holds supervised trainees and long-tenured dispensers in one group, so one percentile spread describes them all. On credentials, NBC-HIS board certification (Board Certified in Hearing Instrument Sciences) is a voluntary credential, and our research found no published data showing it changes pay — treat any claimed certification premium as unverified.
Our research found no published formula behind any of these factors.
The honest read is that occupation-wide statistics set the range, and the employer's plan sets your place in it.
Choosing the field rather than negotiating within it?
The hearing instrument specialist career guide covers the job itself, the licensing route and the settings where dispensers work.
HIS pay by state
Pay differs by state.
In the May 2025 release, state medians for the occupation ranged from $35,110 in West Virginia to $82,990 in New York.
BLS published a mean wage for all but eight jurisdictions: Arkansas, the District of Columbia, Maine, Mississippi, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Rhode Island and Wyoming.
A missing row is a suppression of the statistics, not a sign that dispensers there are unlicensed or unpaid — the estimate is withheld, not zero.
The HIS salary by state page lays out the May 2025 wage tables state by state, on the same SOC 29-2092 basis as the national figures above.
Use a state median as a starting point, not a quote: it blends every employer model in that state, from warehouse clubs to independent clinics, and an individual offer sits at one point inside that blend.
Career information, not licensing, legal, medical, clinical, billing or coding, or tax advice. Figures are BLS OEWS May 2025 and BLS Employment Projections 2025–35 unless noted; confirm current figures with BLS or with the employer.