Medical Assistant Salary in Arkansas 2026,
$37,760 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Arkansas figure is $37,760 a year, or $18.15 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 17.4% below the national median of $45,690. The band runs from $30,840 at the 10th percentile to $46,060 at the 90th, which means the top of the Arkansas market sits roughly where the national median for the occupation is.

No. Arkansas does not license, register or certify medical assistants and no state agency issues a credential for the role. The job is defined by delegation: a supervising physician or advanced practice nurse assigns clinical tasks and retains responsibility for them. The CMA from the American Association of Medical Assistants and the RMA from American Medical Technologists are private certifications that employers often request but the state does not require.

Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers at $38,400, then Little Rock-North Little Rock-Conway $38,110, Fort Smith $37,380, Jonesboro $37,190 and Hot Springs $36,600. The spread across the state is under two thousand dollars, so the choice of employer — a large health system versus a small private practice — moves an Arkansas medical assistant's pay considerably more than the choice of city.

Within the occupation, the options are a specialty practice with more complex procedural work, a health system role carrying shift and weekend differentials, or a lead or clinical coordinator position — which is what the $46,060 ninetieth percentile describes. Beyond that, the honest answer is that the band is narrow and the ceiling is low, and many Arkansas medical assistants use the role as paid clinical experience toward nursing, imaging or another licensed profession.

It is not required, which is why it is useful. With no state credential, an employer has no objective way to compare candidates, so the CMA or RMA is the signal that gets an application past a screen at the larger systems and clinic networks. It is also portable across state lines in a way that local experience is not. At a $37,760 median the cost matters, so ask whether the employer will fund the examination and the recertification cycle before paying for it personally.

It means progression inside the occupation is limited and should be planned around. From the 25th percentile of $35,700 to the 75th at $42,900 is a small range, and the 90th percentile of $46,060 sits only around the national median for the occupation. In practical terms, an Arkansas medical assistant who stays in the role can expect their pay to rise slowly and to plateau early, regardless of competence. That is not a criticism of the work, which is skilled and demanding; it is a statement about how the job is priced in a state that regulates nobody in it and where clinic budgets are tight. Anyone entering it should decide early whether they are treating it as a destination or as a funded route into a licensed profession, because the financial answer is quite different in each case.

Entirely by employers, and in Arkansas a small number of them set the market. With no licence, no examination and no registry, there is no supply constraint on the occupation — anyone with training can be hired tomorrow — and no credential a candidate can point to that the state stands behind. What fills the gap is the private certifications and the internal pay structures of the large health systems and clinic networks around Little Rock and Northwest Arkansas. Those employers publish rates, smaller practices benchmark against them, and the result is the tight metro spread visible here, from $36,600 in Hot Springs to $38,400 in Fayetteville-Springdale-Rogers. An individual's negotiating position is correspondingly weak on rate and stronger on everything else: schedule, benefits eligibility, differentials and certification funding.

It creates positions that the wage figures do not make obvious. Arkansas has substantial rural health access gaps, and the response has been clinic and federally qualified health centre capacity in underserved counties — settings that run on medical assistants because delegation lets a smaller clinical team see more patients. A location quotient of 0.75 says the state employs fewer medical assistants per head than the country does, which in a state with this much unmet need reflects clinic capacity rather than absence of demand. For a job seeker that means openings outside the metros are real, that some of them sit in organisations with federal funding and therefore more structured benefits than a small private practice offers, and that loan repayment or tuition assistance for staff moving toward licensed roles is occasionally available in ways the base wage does not show.