Medical Assistant Salary in Austin, TX 2026,
$45,820 Median | BLS + Market Data

Austin medical assistants earn a BLS median of $45,820/yr, or $22.03 an hour, for the Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos metro, with a published band of $37,210 to $54,820. That is 15.9% above the Texas statewide median and level with the US median. The metro employs 5,830 medical assistants, a large enough base that the figure is a reliable read on the local market.

Yes, and by an unusually wide margin — 15.9% above the Texas statewide median, the biggest metro-to-state gap for this role among the state's major markets. The Texas figure is held down by rural and border-region wages; Austin's floor is lifted because clinics here compete for staff against retail, hospitality and technology-adjacent employers offering comparable entry pay.

Procedural specialty practices — orthopaedics, dermatology, ophthalmology and GI — sit at the top, followed by the ambulatory networks of Ascension Seton, St. David's and Baylor Scott & White, which pair banded scales with system benefits. Independent primary care sets the median. Community health centres and urgent care sit lowest on rate, though the FQHCs often win on schedule stability and loan-repayment eligibility.

Legally, no — Texas does not license the occupation and delegation runs through the supervising physician. Practically, yes: the CMA, RMA and CCMA credentials are how Austin's larger employers filter a crowded applicant pool, and the hospital-affiliated networks increasingly require one at hire. An uncertified assistant can still find work in small independent offices, which is a meaningful part of why the bottom of the band sits where it does.

It is tight inside the city. The absence of a state income tax helps at this wage level more than at any other on this site, but Austin rents have risen faster than clinical support wages for a decade. Most of the metro's assistants resolve it by living along the I-35 corridor toward Round Rock, Pflugerville, Kyle or San Marcos and commuting, and by targeting the specialty and hospital-system roles that reach the upper part of the $37,210 to $54,820 band.

A 15.9% premium over the state sounds decisive, but the comparison is doing a lot of work. Texas is a very large and very uneven wage state, and the statewide median for this occupation is dragged down by markets with structurally lower costs and wages. Measured against the country instead, Austin is exactly average. The honest summary is that Austin is a good place to be a medical assistant relative to Texas, and an ordinary one relative to the United States.

From the 10th percentile to the 90th, this occupation spans a comparatively small range in Austin. That has a practical consequence: patience alone does not pay. An assistant who stays in the same primary-care office for a decade will not drift toward the top of the band. Movement into a procedural specialty, into a hospital system grade, into a lead role, or onward into a nursing or imaging programme is what changes the number — and the Austin market has more of those routes open than most Texas metros.

Austin gained a medical school only in the last decade, and the region's health systems have been building ambulatory capacity around it ever since — new clinic sites, expanded specialty networks and freestanding centres out along the growth corridors. Medical assistants are the staffing unit that build-out consumes most of. That is what turns a 12.5% national growth rate into a genuinely active local hiring market, and why turnover in this metro is high in both directions.