Paramedic Salary in New York 2026,
$73,200 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New York figure is $73,200 a year, or $35.19 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 20.8% above the national median of $60,600 — across a band from $55,900 at the 10th percentile to $98,050 at the 90th. The state figure conceals a sharp split, though: downstate metros publish around $79,000 and upstate metros around $63,000, so the statewide median describes very few actual paramedics.

New York-Newark-Jersey City at $79,550 and Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh at $78,950 lead, with Syracuse $63,700, Albany-Schenectady-Troy $63,370 and Rochester $62,940 roughly sixteen thousand dollars behind. This is the widest downstate-upstate gap in this unit, and it reflects the difference between well-funded municipal and hospital-based systems and upstate services that still rely partly on volunteers.

The New York State Department of Health, through its Bureau of Emergency Medical Services. This is a genuine exception to how the state regulates professions — almost everything else runs through the State Education Department's Office of the Professions, but EMS does not. The credential is a certification rather than a licence, and paramedics practise under the medical direction of a regional EMS council, which means the protocols and permitted interventions can differ between regions of the same state.

Employer structure. Downstate EMS is dominated by municipal services and large hospital-based systems with formal pay scales, union agreements, seniority steps and dense overtime availability. Upstate the mix includes far more small private services and municipalities that supplement paid staff with volunteers, which holds base rates near the $62,630 twenty-fifth percentile. The certification is identical; the employer economics are not, and that is where the sixteen-thousand-dollar gap comes from.

Enough that the top of the band is difficult to read without it. The jump from the $80,870 seventy-fifth percentile to the $98,050 ninetieth is larger than any single promotion in this occupation produces, and EMS scheduling in New York's larger systems — long tours, mandatory holdovers, chronic short-staffing — generates substantial premium hours. Anyone comparing a New York EMS offer to another state's should establish the base rate separately, because the annualised figures on this page include a great deal of time actually worked.

Because a large share of the state's EMS workforce is employed by well-resourced downstate municipal and hospital systems with negotiated pay scales, and those systems compete for staff against fire services, hospitals and neighbouring states. National paramedic pay is depressed by a private-ambulance employment model that New York has less of, proportionally, in its high-population regions. The state's location quotient of 0.97 is almost exactly the national rate, so this is a price effect rather than a concentration effect.

The statewide median describes a population that barely exists. With downstate metros publishing near $79,000 and upstate metros near $63,000, and very little between, $73,200 is a midpoint of two distinct labour markets rather than a going rate anyone is actually paid. Anyone using this page should read the metro rows rather than the headline. The annualisation caveat applies too: EMS hours are long and overtime-heavy, so the upper percentiles reflect time worked as much as rate.

Employer type first, and it dominates everything else — municipal or large hospital-based systems against small private services is most of the sixteen-thousand-dollar metro gap. Then hours, because overtime availability is the difference between the $80,870 seventy-fifth percentile and the $98,050 ninetieth in most systems. Then specialisation: critical-care transport, flight, and tactical or special-operations assignment carry premiums and are gated by additional training beyond the Bureau of EMS paramedic certification. Seniority steps matter in the unionised downstate systems and much less in the upstate private ones.