Medical Assistant Salary in Tennessee 2026,
$39,570 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $39,570 a year, or $19.02 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $37,160 and $45,580 and a full range of $34,840 to $48,540. That is 13.4% below the $45,690 national median, and Tennessee's 75th percentile is roughly where the national median sits.

Nashville at $44,620, by a wide margin. Chattanooga follows at $40,160, then Memphis at $39,260, Knoxville at $38,880 and Kingsport-Bristol at $38,040. The Nashville premium of more than six and a half thousand dollars over the Tri-Cities is the biggest single difference available in this occupation in Tennessee.

No. Tennessee does not license or register medical assistants and sets no statutory scope of practice for them — what you are permitted to do is delegated by the supervising physician and governed by the employer's policy. That makes national certification the de facto credential: the CMA from the AAMA, the RMA from AMT, the NCMA from the NCCT or the CCMA from the NHA, plus a current BLS card. Vanderbilt, the HCA-affiliated practice networks and Ballad Health commonly require or strongly prefer one.

In a state with no licence, it is the only formal signal you can send, and it is what separates the $34,840 tenth percentile from the range above it. Employers use it to satisfy their own delegation policies, and the larger Tennessee systems increasingly treat it as a hiring requirement rather than a preference. It does not guarantee a specific wage, but the uncertified end of this band is where Tennessee's lowest-paying small practices sit.

Somewhat, but less than it helps a higher earner. There is no state income tax on earned income, which saves several hundred to about a thousand dollars a year against neighbouring states on a $39,570 wage. Against that, combined state and local sales tax runs near 9.5% and applies to groceries, which is a heavy burden on a household that spends nearly all of its income. For this occupation the structure is close to a wash.

Because a location quotient of 1.11 on roughly 19,180 posts is the signature of an ambulatory care sector that expanded rapidly by substituting medical assistants for more expensive staff. Tennessee's practice networks — the Vanderbilt and HCA-affiliated groups, Ballad Health, the Memphis systems — built out large clinic footprints, and the medical assistant role scaled with them. High employment plus a low rate produces high turnover, which is exactly what the 2,630 annual openings figure describes. The practical consequence for a job seeker is leverage: vacancies are constant, and a certified applicant can afford to be selective about the employer.

It blends a very wide set of jobs under one occupation code. A medical assistant in a solo family practice in a rural county and one working in a Nashville specialty clinic with a lead role are both counted here, and they earn several thousand dollars apart. The figure also excludes shift differentials and the sign-on incentives Tennessee employers use during hiring pushes. And because Tennessee sets no scope of practice, two jobs with the same title can involve genuinely different work — one mostly administrative, one mostly clinical — at similar pay.

Three things, in order. Get to Nashville, or to a Nashville-market employer: $44,620 against a $39,570 state median is the largest available move. Get certified, because it is the only credential in a state with no licence and it lifts you off the bottom of the band. Then move toward specialty practice, lead MA and clinical coordinator roles, which are what reach the $45,580 seventy-fifth percentile and the $48,540 ninetieth. Beyond that, the natural next step is a credentialed one — LPN or radiologic technology programmes are the routes Tennessee medical assistants most often take out of this band entirely.