---
title: "Cardiovascular Technologist and Technician"
description: "Conduct tests on pulmonary or cardiovascular systems of patients for diagnostic, therapeutic, or research purposes. May conduct or assist in…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/cardiovascular-technologist-and-technician"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Cardiovascular Technologist and Technician

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-2031 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-2031.00

Conduct tests on pulmonary or cardiovascular systems of patients for diagnostic, therapeutic, or research purposes. May conduct or assist in electrocardiograms, cardiac catheterizations, pulmonary functions, lung capacity, and similar tests.

Also advertised as: Cardiac Cath Lab Technologist (Cardiac Catheterization Laboratory Technologist); Cardiac Catheterization Technician; Cardiac Technician; Cardio Tech (Cardiovascular Technician); Cardiology Technician; Cardiopulmonary Technician; Cardiovascular Technologist (CVT); Electrocardiogram Technician (EKG Tech).

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $74,310 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $35.73/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $39,000 to $121,350, with the middle half between $47,890 and $98,110
- **Total US employment:** 62,960
- **Typical entry education:** Associate's
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 3,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 45/100 — 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 62,960 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $39,000 |
| 25th | $47,890 |
| 50th (median) | $74,310 |
| 75th | $98,110 |
| 90th | $121,350 |
| Mean (average) | $76,940 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| UT | $113,510 | $114,814 | 1,250 |
| HI | $111,730 | $101,618 | 140 |
| MA | $105,580 | $99,833 | 1,110 |
| RI | $104,000 | $101,682 | 260 |
| ID | $100,100 | $104,823 | 220 |
| DC | $99,380 | $90,427 | 280 |
| OR | $99,240 | $96,013 | 550 |
| CT | $94,940 | $91,632 | 620 |
| CO | $94,190 | $91,400 | 720 |
| NY | $89,570 | $82,996 | 3,540 |
| DE | $87,640 | $87,809 | 290 |
| MD | $86,440 | $82,356 | 970 |
| WY | $84,140 | $90,775 | 60 |
| WA | $83,790 | $78,299 | 1,110 |
| NH | $83,100 | $79,777 | 150 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/cardiovascular-technologist-and-technician/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/cardiovascular-technologist-and-technician.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 64,500 in the 2025–2035 base year to 66,900 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 2,400 jobs, or +3.7%. About as fast as average: 3.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 3,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Associate's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 62.9% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 12.9% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 9.9% |
| Some College Courses | 7.8% |
| First Professional Degree | 3.8% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 2.8% |

## What the work involves

- Prepare and position patients for testing.
- Obtain and record patient identification, medical history, or test results.
- Adjust equipment and controls according to physicians' orders or established protocol.
- Explain testing procedures to patients to obtain cooperation and reduce anxiety.
- Monitor patients' comfort and safety during tests, alerting physicians to abnormalities or changes in patient responses.
- Conduct electrocardiogram (EKG), phonocardiogram, echocardiogram, stress testing, or other cardiovascular tests to record patients' cardiac activity, using specialized electronic test equipment, recording devices, or laboratory instruments.
- Check, test, and maintain cardiology equipment, making minor repairs when necessary, to ensure proper operation.
- Monitor patients' blood pressure and heart rate using electrocardiogram (EKG) equipment during diagnostic or therapeutic procedures to notify the physician if something appears wrong.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — 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.

- Operations Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.3 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 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Mathematics — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.6 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 Realistic (R), Investigative (I), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| R — Realistic | 5.61 |
| I — Investigative | 5.31 |
| C — Conventional | 4.70 |
| S — Social | 4.25 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.30 |
| 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 82.4 |
| ISFJ | 76.3 |
| ISTP | 71.1 |
| ESTJ | 64.3 |
| INTJ | 64.1 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Diagnostic Medical Sonographer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/diagnostic-medical-sonographer) — median $96,590
- [Neurodiagnostic Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/neurodiagnostic-technologist) — median $50,290
- [Radiologic Technologist and Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/radiologic-technologist-and-technician) — median $80,110
- [Radiation Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/radiation-therapist) — median $105,310
- [Respiratory Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/respiratory-therapist) — median $82,280
- [Ophthalmic Medical Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/ophthalmic-medical-technologist) — median $50,290
- [Nuclear Medicine Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nuclear-medicine-technologist) — median $101,370
- [Magnetic Resonance Imaging Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/magnetic-resonance-imaging-technologist) — median $95,480
- [Surgical Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/surgical-technologist) — median $64,650
- [Medical and Clinical Laboratory Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-and-clinical-laboratory-technician) — median $62,930

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 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, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 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 31.0 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/cardiovascular-technologist-and-technician