Medical Assistant Salary in Michigan 2026,
$39,870 Median | BLS Data by City

Michigan medical assistants earn a median $39,870 a year, $19.17 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $37,420 and $46,020 and a full range of $35,000 to $48,330. That is 12.7% below the $45,690 national median.

Kalamazoo-Portage at $46,690, then Ann Arbor at $43,180, Traverse City at $42,580, Saginaw at $41,330 and Niles at $41,100. Kalamazoo leading by nearly seven thousand dollars over the state median reflects a concentrated academic and life sciences health sector in a market with a limited local labour pool.

No. Michigan issues no licence, registration or certification for medical assistants and the title is not protected, so a practice may train into the role. What Michigan does govern is delegation: a medical assistant may only perform tasks that a licensed practitioner may lawfully delegate. Employers screen on AAMA or NHA certification, which the state's large health systems increasingly require.

Michigan applies a flat 4.25% state income tax at every income level. On top of that, around two dozen Michigan cities levy their own income tax — Detroit at 2.4% for residents and 1.2% for non-residents working there, with Grand Rapids, Lansing, Flint and others at lower rates. At a $39,870 salary the city layer is a real proportional cost worth checking before accepting a job.

Supply. A location quotient of 1.2 means Michigan employs twenty per cent more medical assistants per worker than the country does, the state has a large number of training programmes feeding the occupation, and its physician practice networks operate standardised pay grids. Abundant, easily trained supply against standardised demand produces a $39,870 median against a $45,690 national figure.

The band is narrow and the ceiling is low: $48,330 at the ninetieth percentile means there is very little room to grow within this occupation in Michigan. The annualised figure also assumes full-time hours, and part-time work is common in physician practices. Anyone reading this page as a career plan should treat the role as an entry point into healthcare rather than a destination, which is how most Michigan health systems themselves treat it.

Because it has a health and life sciences employment base out of proportion to its size — an academic medical presence, a substantial pharmaceutical and research sector, and a regional hospital system — competing for medical assistants in a metro of a few hundred thousand people. Ann Arbor at $43,180 shows the same effect at a slightly smaller scale. Detroit's much larger market does not appear on the metro table, which tells you supply there is deep enough to hold rates near the state median of $39,870.

Into licensed practice. Michigan's health systems commonly support medical assistants moving into licensed roles — practical nursing, registered nursing, surgical technology — with tuition assistance, and those credentials carry substantially higher pay bands. Within the occupation itself, specialty practice in dermatology, cardiology or ophthalmology and lead or coordinator responsibility are what reach the $46,020 seventy-fifth percentile and the $48,330 ninetieth.