---
title: "Midwife"
description: "Provide prenatal care and childbirth assistance."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/midwife"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Midwife

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-9099 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-9099.01

Provide prenatal care and childbirth assistance.

Also advertised as: Birth Center Midwife; Certified Direct-Entry Midwife; Certified Professional Midwife (CPM); Homebirth Midwife; Lay Midwife; Licensed and Certified Midwife; Licensed Certified Professional Midwife; Licensed Direct Entry Midwife.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $65,790 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $31.63/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $38,660 to $129,830, with the middle half between $47,750 and $97,000
- **Total US employment:** 35,010
- **Typical entry education:** Certificate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +5.1% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 2,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 54/100 — 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 35,010 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $38,660 |
| 25th | $47,750 |
| 50th (median) | $65,790 |
| 75th | $97,000 |
| 90th | $129,830 |
| Mean (average) | $76,720 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $113,640 | $103,402 | 130 |
| PR | $108,890 | No BEA price parity | 60 |
| NY | $102,990 | $95,431 | 1,110 |
| KY | $91,560 | $101,554 | 190 |
| MO | $86,110 | $94,817 | 450 |
| WI | $81,580 | $86,700 | 470 |
| IN | $81,290 | $87,100 | 500 |
| WA | $80,730 | $75,439 | 880 |
| MA | $80,240 | $75,872 | 310 |
| MN | $79,990 | $81,108 | 410 |
| NH | $79,860 | $76,667 | 360 |
| MT | $79,070 | $83,544 | 190 |
| CT | $78,980 | $76,228 | 420 |
| MI | $77,130 | $80,163 | 1,160 |
| NJ | $76,570 | $70,374 | 720 |

35 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 50 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/midwife/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/midwife.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 39,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 41,000 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 2,000 jobs, or +5.1%. Faster than average: 5.1% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 2,200 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:** Postsecondary nondegree award (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 |
| --- | --- |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 32.8% |
| Master's Degree | 28.8% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 15.9% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 12.2% |
| Some College Courses | 8.8% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 1.5% |

## What the work involves

- Identify tubal and ectopic pregnancies and refer patients for treatments.
- Conduct ongoing prenatal health assessments, tracking changes in physical and emotional health.
- Monitor fetal growth and well-being through heartbeat detection, body measurement, and palpation.
- Establish and follow emergency or contingency plans for mothers and newborns.
- Identify, monitor, or treat pregnancy-related problems such as hypertension, gestational diabetes, pre-term labor, or retarded fetal growth.
- Obtain complete health and medical histories from patients including medical, surgical, reproductive, or mental health histories.
- Evaluate patients' laboratory and medical records, requesting assistance from other practitioners when necessary.
- Assess the status of post-date pregnancies to determine treatments and interventions.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 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.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — 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 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.9 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), Realistic (R), Investigative (I).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.04 |
| R — Realistic | 3.98 |
| I — Investigative | 3.54 |
| C — Conventional | 3.26 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.70 |
| A — Artistic | 1.91 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 69.1 |
| ISFJ | 67.9 |
| ESFP | 66.2 |
| ISFP | 61.2 |
| ENFJ | 56.2 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ, ISFJ, ESFP.

## Related occupations

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

- [Nurse Midwife](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nurse-midwife) — median $134,040
- [Nurse Practitioner](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nurse-practitioner) — median $132,300
- [Obstetrician and Gynecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/obstetrician-and-gynecologist) — median $292,910
- [Registered Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/registered-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Pediatrician, General](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatrician-general) — median $210,040
- [Family Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/family-medicine-physician) — median $244,180
- [Emergency Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medicine-physician) — median $335,550
- [Acute Care Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/acute-care-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Licensed Practical Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/licensed-practical-nurse) — median $64,400
- [Critical Care Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/critical-care-nurse) — median $97,550

## 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/midwife