---
title: "Hearing Aid Specialist"
description: "Select and fit hearing aids for customers. Administer and interpret tests of hearing. Assess hearing instrument efficacy. Take ear impressions and…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/hearing-aid-specialist"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Hearing Aid Specialist

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-2092 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-2092.00

Select and fit hearing aids for customers. Administer and interpret tests of hearing. Assess hearing instrument efficacy. Take ear impressions and prepare, design, and modify ear molds.

Also advertised as: Audioprosthologist; Hearing Aid Consultant; Hearing Aid Specialist; Hearing Care Practitioner; Hearing Care Specialist; Hearing Instrument Dispenser; Hearing Instrument Specialist (HIS); Hearing Specialist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $65,160 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $31.33/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $38,400 to $94,020, with the middle half between $48,390 and $80,010
- **Total US employment:** 11,270
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +19.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 900 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 48/100 — 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 11,270 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $38,400 |
| 25th | $48,390 |
| 50th (median) | $65,160 |
| 75th | $80,010 |
| 90th | $94,020 |
| Mean (average) | $66,370 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NY | $82,990 | $76,899 | 380 |
| NV | $81,800 | $81,817 | 60 |
| CA | $80,060 | $72,309 | 990 |
| TN | $78,270 | $85,196 | 190 |
| CO | $77,540 | $75,244 | 140 |
| WA | $77,510 | $72,430 | 280 |
| MD | $77,460 | $73,800 | 50 |
| AZ | $76,750 | $76,234 | 110 |
| WI | $76,750 | $81,567 | 170 |
| NC | $75,810 | $80,370 | 240 |
| NJ | $75,720 | $69,592 | 470 |
| MA | $75,310 | $71,210 | Not published by BLS |
| AK | $75,300 | $73,565 | 30 |
| ID | $75,300 | $78,853 | 160 |
| MT | $75,300 | $79,560 | 60 |

28 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 43 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/hearing-aid-specialist/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/hearing-aid-specialist.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 11,200 in the 2025–2035 base year to 13,400 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 2,200 jobs, or +19.4%. Much faster than average: 19.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 900 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:** High school diploma or equivalent (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:** Moderate-term on-the-job training.

### 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Doctoral Degree | 44.0% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 22.1% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 12.0% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 11.9% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 9.2% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 0.4% |

## What the work involves

- Maintain or repair hearing aids or other communication devices.
- Train clients to use hearing aids or other augmentative communication devices.
- Counsel patients and families on communication strategies and the effects of hearing loss.
- Administer basic hearing tests including air conduction, bone conduction, or speech audiometry tests.
- Create or modify impressions for earmolds and hearing aid shells.
- Read current literature, talk with colleagues, and participate in professional organizations or conferences to keep abreast of developments in audiology.
- Perform basic screening procedures, such as pure tone screening, otoacoustic screening, immittance screening, and screening of ear canal status using otoscope.
- Select and administer tests to evaluate hearing or related disabilities.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — 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.

- Service Orientation — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — 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
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sales and Marketing — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- 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
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.5 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 Social (S), Conventional (C), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 4.55 |
| C — Conventional | 4.40 |
| I — Investigative | 4.38 |
| R — Realistic | 3.87 |
| A — Artistic | 1.73 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.73 |

### 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 | 77.9 |
| ISTJ | 72.3 |
| ESTJ | 61.9 |
| ESFJ | 60.6 |
| ISFP | 58.1 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Ophthalmic Medical Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/ophthalmic-medical-technician) — median $45,570
- [Orthotist and Prosthetist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/orthotist-and-prosthetist) — median $81,110
- [Neurodiagnostic Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/neurodiagnostic-technologist) — median $50,290
- [Dental Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/dental-assistant) — median $48,070
- [Endoscopy Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/endoscopy-technician) — median $48,430
- [Occupational Therapy Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-aide) — median $39,160
- [Medical Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/medical-assistant) — median $45,690
- [Ophthalmic Medical Technologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/ophthalmic-medical-technologist) — median $50,290
- [Physical Therapist Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist-aide) — median $35,240
- [Speech-Language Pathology Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/speech-language-pathology-assistant) — median $48,430

## 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/
- **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/hearing-aid-specialist