Optometrist Salary in Michigan 2026,
$135,650 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $135,650 a year, or $65.21 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 0.7% below the national median of $136,570, which makes Michigan effectively a national-average market for this profession. The band runs $98,110 at the 10th percentile to $213,850 at the 90th, with the middle half between $125,000 and $161,970.

Detroit-Warren-Dearborn at $142,690, then Grand Rapids-Wyoming-Kentwood $134,420, Flint $134,030, Ann Arbor $133,770 and Kalamazoo-Portage $131,770. Under eleven thousand dollars covers the whole table, so moving within Michigan is not a meaningful pay strategy in this profession — practice type is.

Through the Board of Optometry within the Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs, which is Michigan's single umbrella regulator for professional licensing. The route is a Doctor of Optometry degree from an accredited school, the national board examination sequence, and application to the board. Michigan's licence includes therapeutic certification authorising diagnosis and treatment of ocular disease and prescribing of pharmaceutical agents — the scope that carries most of the profession's clinical and commercial value here.

Because three different business models share one occupational code. Commercial retail optometry pays a salary or a per-day rate for high-volume refraction. Employed medical optometry in ophthalmology practices and health systems pays for disease management scope. And practice ownership pays profit rather than wages. The distance from the $125,000 quarter-point to the $161,970 seventy-fifth percentile and the $213,850 ninetieth is mostly movement between those models, not seniority within one.

The state rate is a flat 4.25%, so an owner at the $213,850 ninetieth percentile and an associate at $125,000 face the same rate — favourable at the upper end compared with progressive states, and it applies to distributed practice profit as well as salary. The local layer is the Michigan-specific point: several cities levy their own income tax, with Detroit at 2.4% for residents and 1.2% for non-residents. Detroit-Warren-Dearborn publishes the state's highest optometry figure, so the boundary question is a live one.

The 10th percentile of $98,110 is notably high — in several states the equivalent figure sits well below it, because optometry has a large part-time, locum and partial-year segment that OEWS reports as low annual wages without adjusting for hours. Michigan's sample appears to contain comparatively little of that, which suggests a profession dominated by full-time employed and owner-operated practice rather than by flexible commercial fill-in work. Combined with a location quotient of 1.16, the picture is of a settled, mature optometry market with fewer marginal practitioners than the national average.

Optometry has a high rate of practice ownership, and OEWS measures wages paid to employees. Owner-optometrists taking profit distributions are under-represented, so the $213,850 ninetieth percentile understates the earnings ceiling for a successful practice. With about 1,410 optometrists statewide the metro rows rest on modest samples, and given that they span under eleven thousand dollars, small sampling differences could reorder them. The estimate also does not distinguish therapeutic scope, which is the profession's main clinical divide.

Practice model first — moving from commercial retail refraction into medical optometry, and from employment into ownership, is what the whole band measures. Therapeutic scope second: glaucoma management, diabetic eye disease and post-surgical co-management are what a Michigan licence permits and what medical practices pay for. Ownership third, taxed at the same flat 4.25% as salary. And geography barely at all, given a metro table spanning under eleven thousand dollars — though the city income tax layer means where you live still matters.