Healthcare, biotech and university pay in the Boston area

If you work in a Boston hospital, a Cambridge lab or a local university, or you are weighing a move into one, this guide shows you what those jobs pay in Greater Boston using the federal government's May 2025 wage survey. You will also see how to compare those numbers with national pay, adjust for Boston prices, and check what a specific hospital, biotech or university pays before you negotiate.

The short version: Boston pays more than the national average in all three sectors, but the gap is not the same everywhere in the range. Knowing where you sit in that range is what turns a number into leverage.

Why Boston pay is driven by healthcare, life sciences and higher education

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) runs the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, known as OEWS. It is the most detailed public source on what employers actually pay by job and by metro area. For the Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH metro area, the BLS May 2025 release puts the average hourly wage across all jobs at $43.09, against $33.54 nationally.

The clearest sign of how unusual Boston's job mix is sits in the science group. Life, physical, and social science jobs make up 2.5 percent of Boston-area employment, compared with 0.9 percent nationally. Healthcare practitioner jobs and teaching jobs also take a bigger share locally than they do across the country.

Here is how the main groups compare, from the BLS Boston release:

Notice the last four rows. Hospitals, labs and universities employ huge numbers of managers, finance staff, data and IT people, and administrators. If your job is not clinical or scientific, your pay is still shaped by these sectors, and you should look up the group your actual job belongs to.

One more clue from the same release: fundraisers, a role you find at almost every university, hospital foundation and research nonprofit, are employed in Boston at 2.39 times the national rate. BLS calls this a location quotient. A value of 2.00 means a job takes up twice the share of local employment that it does nationally.

How to read these numbers before you use them

Three terms do most of the work in any pay report. Here they are in plain words.

• Mean (average): add up everyone's pay and divide by the number of people. A handful of very high earners can pull it up, which is why the BLS Boston release above, which reports means, can make a group look richer than a typical worker in it.
• Median: line everyone up from lowest to highest paid. The person in the middle is the median. Half earn more, half earn less. For "what does a normal person in this job make," the median is usually the better number.
• Percentiles: the 25th percentile is the point where a quarter of workers earn less; the 75th is where three quarters earn less. The 10th and 90th mark the bottom and top edges of the range. The distance between the 25th and 75th percentiles tells you how much room there is to negotiate.

Two limits to keep in mind. OEWS counts wages, not benefits, bonuses paid outside regular pay, or equity. And it describes the market, not any one employer's pay scale.

Hospital and clinical jobs: Boston-area pay (May 2025 OEWS)

Registered nurses are the largest clinical job in most hospitals, and they are a good example of how Boston pay really behaves. These figures come from O*NET OnLine's local wage table, a Department of Labor-sponsored tool that publishes BLS 2025 wage data by metro area.

Look at the shape, not just the middle. The Boston median of $106,180 is above the national median of $97,550, but not dramatically. The big difference is at the top. A Boston nurse at the 75th percentile earns $153,380, compared with $112,350 at the same point nationally.

That tells you something practical. In Boston, where you land in the range matters more than the city label. The data does not say why a given nurse is at the top, but the usual levers in hospital pay are years of experience, specialty unit, certifications, and night, weekend and on-call differentials. Those are the things to ask about.

If you think in hourly terms, the same table puts the Boston median at $51.05 an hour, against $46.90 nationally, and the Boston 75th percentile at $73.74 an hour.

It also helps to see nearby markets. The O*NET table shows a registered nurse median of $100,240 in the Worcester area and $98,410 in the Springfield area. If you are deciding between commuting into Boston and working closer to home, that gap is part of the math, along with commute time and housing costs.

For the rest of the hospital workforce, the group averages in the first table are your starting point. Healthcare practitioners and technical jobs (nurses, pharmacists, therapists, technologists and physicians) averaged $59.87 an hour in Boston versus $52.26 nationally. Healthcare support jobs, such as nursing assistants and medical assistants, averaged $22.69 versus $19.62. Hospitals also employ many people in cleaning, food service and admin roles; in Boston those groups averaged $23.20, $20.59 and $28.64 an hour respectively.

Life sciences jobs: scientists, lab technicians and research roles

The life, physical, and social science group is where Boston stands out most. Its Boston average was $56.22 an hour in May 2025, compared with $45.48 nationally, and its share of local jobs is close to three times the national share.

Be careful with that group number, though. It mixes very different jobs: research scientists with doctorates, lab technicians, chemists, and also social scientists such as economists and psychologists. A lab technician should not benchmark against it, and a principal scientist should not either.

To get the number for your actual job, look up the specific occupation for the Boston-Cambridge-Newton metro. The ones most biotech and research workers fall under are:

• Medical scientists, except epidemiologists (SOC 19-1042): most academic and industry research scientists working on human health.
• Biochemists and biophysicists (SOC 19-1021).
• Biological technicians (SOC 19-4021): research associates and lab technicians who run experiments under a scientist.
• Chemists (SOC 19-2031): common in process development, analytical and quality roles.
• Natural sciences managers (SOC 11-9121): heads of labs, research directors.

Many people at biotech companies are not in the science group at all. Data scientists and bioinformatics staff sit in computer and mathematical jobs, which averaged $65.47 an hour in Boston. Regulatory, finance and business development staff sit in business and financial operations, which averaged $54.89. Senior leaders sit in management, at $88.02.

Two cautions specific to this sector. First, OEWS measures wages only, and biotech offers often include equity and annual bonuses that the survey does not capture. Second, academic research jobs and industry jobs share the same occupation codes, so a single Boston median blends a postdoc's pay with a pharma scientist's. When the range for your code is wide, that blend is usually why.

University jobs: faculty and staff roles

Educational instruction and library jobs averaged $41.04 an hour in Boston in May 2025, compared with $32.47 nationally. That group includes school teachers and librarians as well as college faculty, so it is a rough guide at best for university pay.

For faculty, look up the postsecondary teacher code for your field, such as health specialties teachers, biological science teachers or English language and literature teachers. BLS often reports these as annual pay only, because many faculty do not work a standard year-round schedule. Check whether a figure covers a nine-month or twelve-month appointment before you compare it with an offer, and ask the same question about the offer itself.

Most university employees are staff, not faculty. Their pay follows the occupation they do, which is why the business, IT, management and admin rows in the first table matter so much here. A grants administrator, a research administrator, a financial aid counselor or a lab manager should look up their own occupation rather than an "education" average.

How Boston pay compares once prices are counted

Higher pay in Boston does not mean more money left over. To compare fairly, use the Bureau of Economic Analysis's regional price parities (search "regional price parities by state and metro area" on bea.gov), usually shortened to RPPs. They measure how expensive an area is compared with the national average, which BEA sets at 100.

Here is how to use them:

1. Open the BEA page and download the newest year of metro area RPPs. BEA publishes them with a lag, so note the year on the table and quote it alongside any comparison.
2. Find the "all items" RPP for Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH, and for any metro you are comparing it with.
3. Divide the wage by the RPP, then multiply by 100. That gives you a price-adjusted wage you can compare across areas.
4. Look at the separate housing (rents) figure too. Housing is usually the biggest single reason Boston costs more, and it varies most by person, depending on whether you rent, own or share.

Run this for the specific job, not for the all-jobs average. In the nurse table above, the Boston premium over national pay is modest at the median and large at the 75th percentile. That means a price adjustment could shrink or even erase the Boston advantage for a nurse paid at the median, while leaving a clearer advantage for one near the top of the range. Do the arithmetic for your own number.

Checking a specific employer: posted ranges and Form 990s

Market data tells you what the job pays across Boston. Before you negotiate, you also want to know what this employer pays. There are three good places to look.

Posted pay ranges

Massachusetts has a pay range transparency law covering larger employers. The state Attorney General's Office, which enforces it, publishes guidance on mass.gov explaining which employers are covered, when each requirement took effect, and what counts as a valid range. Read that guidance before you rely on a posting, because the details on employer size and what you can request are set there.

In practice, check the employer's own careers site for the same or similar roles, and save the postings. A range posted for a job one level above yours is useful evidence when you ask to be placed higher.

Form 990s for nonprofit hospitals and universities

Most Boston-area hospitals and universities are tax-exempt nonprofits, and they file IRS Form 990 each year. Part VII lists pay for officers, directors, key employees and the highest-compensated staff, and Schedule J breaks that pay into base, bonus, retirement and other benefits.

You can find filings through the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search and through free databases that republish them. Two limits: filings lag by a year or more, and they only show the top of the organization, so they are best for leadership pay and for comparing how two institutions reward senior staff. Our company pay section covers how to read a 990 in more detail.

Public company filings for biotech and pharma

Publicly traded life sciences companies file an annual proxy statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission, which you can search on EDGAR. Besides executive pay, it includes the CEO pay ratio disclosure, which states the annual total compensation of the company's median employee. That is a rare employer-specific "typical worker" number, though it covers the whole company, not just Boston.

Example: weighing a Boston hospital or lab offer

Example (hypothetical): a registered nurse with several years of medical-surgical experience gets an offer from a Boston hospital. The base rate is close to the metro median of $51.05 an hour.

Here is how to work it through with the data above:

• Place the offer. At the median, the offer sits in the middle of the Boston market. The 75th percentile is $73.74 an hour, so there is a lot of market above this offer.
• Ask what moves the number. In nursing, that is usually credited years of experience, certifications and shift differentials. Ask how each one is applied.
• Check the employer. Look for postings of the same role at the same hospital and at competing hospitals, and note their ranges.
• Adjust for prices. If the alternative is a job in the Worcester area, where the median is $100,240 a year, run both through the RPP steps above and add the commute.

A script you could use:

"Thanks, I'm excited about this role. Based on Boston-area data for registered nurses, this rate sits right at the metro median, and I'm bringing several years of med-surg experience plus my certification. Can you walk me through how experience is credited on your scale, and is there room to place me at a higher step?"

If you are a research associate weighing a biotech offer instead, the logic is the same, with two changes. Benchmark against biological technicians for the Boston metro, not the science group average. And ask for the full package in writing, including bonus target and equity, since OEWS does not count those.

"Before I respond, could you share the full compensation breakdown, including the bonus target and any equity, and the salary range for this level? I want to compare it fairly with Boston market data for this role."

Neither script guarantees a higher offer. What they do is show the recruiter you know the market and give them a specific, easy thing to check.

What to do next

• Find your exact occupation code, then pull the Boston-Cambridge-Newton figures for it from the BLS OEWS metro area tables or O*NET's local wage tool. Note the median and the 25th and 75th percentiles.
• Compare with the national OEWS figures for the same job to see how big the Boston premium really is.
• Price-adjust with the newest BEA RPP year, and write the year down next to your number.
• Collect posted ranges from the employer and two competitors before your first pay conversation.
• For nonprofit hospitals and universities, skim the latest Form 990 to see how the organization pays at the top.
• If an offer or a pay practice seems to break the transparency rules, contact the Massachusetts Attorney General's Office or, if you are in a union, your union representative.