Optometrist Salary in Los Angeles, CA 2026,
$138,940 Median | BLS + Market Data

Los Angeles optometrists earn a BLS median of $138,940/yr, or $66.80 an hour, across the Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim metro, with a published band from $73,540 to $209,530. That is 1.7% above the US median for the profession. BLS counts 2,360 optometrists in the metro, at 1.37 times the national concentration.

Slightly — the metro median runs 1.9% above the California statewide figure. But the more useful comparison is against peer metros, where Los Angeles trails Chicago, San Francisco and Dallas. For a profession with a doctoral entry requirement, a wage close to the national average in one of the country's most expensive metros is a weaker result than the headline figure suggests.

Practice ownership, by a clear margin. An owner's income includes the optical dispensing margin and the practice's profit alongside clinical work, which is what takes earnings toward the $209,530 top of the published range — no employed role reaches it. Medical optometry within ophthalmology groups follows, where therapeutic management and post-surgical care command higher associate pay. Retail and per-diem work sits at the bottom.

Through the California State Board of Optometry, part of the Department of Consumer Affairs. The route requires a Doctor of Optometry degree from an accredited school, passage of the national board examinations including the sections California requires, and a jurisprudence requirement, with continuing education to renew. California grants optometrists a relatively wide therapeutic scope, with additional certification available for glaucoma management. Licences are issued statewide, not by city.

It is a large market with an ownership ceiling and a crowded employed tier. The concentration figure of 1.37 says the profession is over-represented here relative to the workforce, which keeps associate salaries close to the national average despite local costs. Optometrists who intend to own a practice find real opportunity in a metro this populous; those planning a salaried career should compare the numbers carefully against cheaper metros that pay similarly.

The distance from the 10th to the 25th percentile here is very large, and then the band compresses sharply. That pattern is characteristic of a profession with meaningful part-time participation: optometrists working a few days a week in retail settings, covering per-diem clinics, or winding down toward retirement all report genuine but partial annual earnings. It does not indicate full-time optometrists earning near the floor. Anyone benchmarking a full-time offer should treat the 25th percentile, not the 10th, as the realistic lower bound.

Optometry is one of the few clinical professions where the largest income determinant is a business decision rather than a clinical one. An owner captures the optical dispensing margin, which in many practices exceeds the professional fee income, plus the enterprise's profit. That is why the upper percentile here sits so far above the employed median, and why comparing an associate salary to the top of this band is misleading — they describe two different economic positions, not two rungs of one ladder.

California grants optometrists a comparatively wide therapeutic scope, including management of a range of ocular conditions with additional certification for glaucoma. That matters commercially as well as clinically: optometrists who practise to the top of that scope integrate into medical eye care, take referrals from and co-manage with ophthalmology, and bill medically rather than only for refraction. In this metro that route is the most reliable way for an employed optometrist to move from the median toward the upper quarter of this band.