---
title: "Anesthesiologist Assistant"
description: "Assist anesthesiologists in the administration of anesthesia for surgical and non-surgical procedures. Monitor patient status and provide patient care…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/anesthesiologist-assistant"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Anesthesiologist Assistant

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1071 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1071.01

Assist anesthesiologists in the administration of anesthesia for surgical and non-surgical procedures. Monitor patient status and provide patient care during surgical treatment.

Also advertised as: Anesthesia Assistant; Anesthesia Technician; Anesthesiologist Assistant; Anesthesiologists' Assistant; Cardiothoracic Anesthesia Technician; Certified Anesthesia Technician; Certified Anesthesiologist Assistant.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $135,880 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $65.33/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $99,380 to $190,280, with the middle half between $120,670 and $163,980
- **Total US employment:** 162,150
- **Typical entry education:** Master's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +20.4% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 12,000 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 50/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 162,150 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $99,380 |
| 25th | $120,670 |
| 50th (median) | $135,880 |
| 75th | $163,980 |
| 90th | $190,280 |
| Mean (average) | $141,280 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NJ | $165,690 | $152,282 | 4,790 |
| CA | $165,650 | $149,612 | 13,600 |
| WA | $164,360 | $153,589 | 3,540 |
| HI | $164,050 | $149,203 | 530 |
| NY | $160,880 | $149,072 | 19,140 |
| OR | $155,780 | $150,714 | 2,250 |
| NH | $150,960 | $144,924 | 1,060 |
| AK | $150,700 | $147,227 | 700 |
| VT | $150,490 | $153,627 | 410 |
| MA | $142,410 | $134,658 | 4,470 |
| MT | $141,470 | $149,474 | 600 |
| MN | $141,190 | $143,164 | 3,660 |
| RI | $139,930 | $136,811 | 810 |
| NM | $139,920 | $151,737 | 700 |
| CT | $139,860 | $134,987 | 3,570 |

36 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 51 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/anesthesiologist-assistant/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/anesthesiologist-assistant.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 162,700 in the 2024–2034 base year to 195,800 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 33,200 jobs, or +20.4%. Much faster than average: 20.4% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 12,000 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Master's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 41.7% |
| High School Diploma | 21.8% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 16.8% |
| First Professional Degree | 14.5% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 4.1% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 1.1% |

## What the work involves

- Verify availability of operating room supplies, medications, and gases.
- Pretest and calibrate anesthesia delivery systems and monitors.
- Respond to emergency situations by providing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), basic cardiac life support (BLS), advanced cardiac life support (ACLS), or pediatric advanced life support (PALS).
- Provide airway management interventions including tracheal intubation, fiber optics, or ventilary support.
- Participate in seminars, workshops, or other professional activities to keep abreast of developments in anesthesiology.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Operation and Control — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Chemistry — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Biology — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Conventional (C), Social (S), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.10 |
| S — Social | 4.90 |
| I — Investigative | 4.62 |
| R — Realistic | 4.40 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.89 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISFJ | 78.9 |
| ISTJ | 77.5 |
| ESTJ | 67.2 |
| ESFJ | 61.0 |
| ISTP | 60.9 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Anesthesiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/anesthesiologist) — median $391,490
- [Pediatric Surgeon](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatric-surgeon) — median $559,030
- [Nurse Anesthetist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nurse-anesthetist) — median $236,590
- [Cardiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cardiologist) — median $496,010
- [Orthopedic Surgeon, Except Pediatric](https://nuecareer.com/careers/orthopedic-surgeon) — median $358,550
- [Emergency Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medicine-physician) — median $335,550
- [Critical Care Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/critical-care-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Physician Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physician-assistant) — median $135,880
- [Nurse Practitioner](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nurse-practitioner) — median $132,300
- [Clinical Nurse Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-nurse-specialist) — median $97,550

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/anesthesiologist-assistant