Where Is Medtech Pay the Best?

Hint: The answer isn't California.

Chris Newmarker

Massachusetts is tops when it comes to average salaries for medical device industry professionals, and medtech insiders in Texas appear to be getting a good deal, too, according to a Qmed analysis of data from MD+DI's Medtech Salary Survey 2016. (Download a copy of the full report here.)

Medical device professionals in California? They kind of seem to be getting the short end of the stick. 

This needs more explanation. But first, here's a chart showing the average annual salaries from the five major medtech states that had large response rates in the survey:

The reason why average medtech salaries aren't looking super in California, even though they are above the national average, is because the Golden State has one of the highest costs of living in the country. In CNBC's America's Top States for Business 2015 scorecard, California had a rank of 46 for cost of living, worse than any of the other four states listed here. (Minnesota was actually No. 1 for cost of living, so its pay is actually competitive.) 

Some playing around on Bankrate's Cost of Living Calculator illustrates the situation even more. A $132,149 a year salary in Los Angeles comes to about $102,000 in Minneapolis and $136,000 in Boston. If the $132,149 salary were in San Francisco, it would be about $81,000 in Minneapolis and $132,000 in Boston.

There's one important caveat related to methodology: California had a much larger sample size than the other states, so perhaps the smaller groups of medtech professionals responding in the other states were skewed more toward those with higher salaries.

Still it's worth noting that California down at third place when it came to the percentage of respondents saying they were satisfied or very satisfied with their jobs:

On the flip side, look how happy the Texans are. And there's little to wonder here. Someone in Austin making $137,000 a year is earning the equivalent of about $200,000 in Los Angeles, $252,000 in San Francisco, $206,000 in Boston, and $154,000 in Minneapolis, according to the Bankrate calculator. So perhaps you need to develop a taste for breakfast burritos and barbecued beef (and a really awesome music scene), and move to the Lone Star State. 

Want to find out more about how the top U.S. medical device hubs stack up? Check out Qmed's roundup of top cities for medtech innovation. And learn more about how your salary stacks up with a full copy of MD+DI's Medtech Salary Survey 2016.

Chris Newmarker is senior editor of Qmed. Follow him on Twitter at @newmarker.

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[Image courtesy of Tax Credits on Flickr]