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Audiologists

Also called Doctor of audiology, Au.D., Clinical audiologist, Hearing specialist, Hearing doctor

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 13,660 US audiologists, with median pay of $95,780 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2012, the highest was 14,730, in May 2024. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 100 from 1946, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for audiologists: Teleaudiology + real-ear measurement software, 2007 to 2022.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 11% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Audiologists: jobs and pay since 1946 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/29-1181

Chicago

Future History. "Audiologists: jobs and pay since 1946." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/29-1181.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_29_1181, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Audiologists: jobs and pay since 1946}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/29-1181}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time
195019752000now
2026
Known then as Aural Rehabilitation Specialist (military, Deshon General Hospital era)
Known then as Audiologist / Hearing Clinician (often folded under Speech Pathology departments)
Known then as Audiologist (independent profession; BLS grouped with Speech-Language Pathologists before 1999)
Known then as Audiologist (BLS SOC 29-1041; Master's degree still common as entry-level)
Known then as Audiologist, Au.D. (BLS SOC 29-1181; Au.D. replaces M.S. as US entry-level clinical degree)
Known today as Audiologist, Au.D. (BLS SOC 29-1181; Au.D. replaces M.S. as US entry-level clinical degree)
Projected to still be called Audiologist, Au.D. (BLS SOC 29-1181; Au.D. replaces M.S. as US entry-level clinical degree)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
14K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$95,780

≈ $93,324 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1944

Captain Raymond Carhart was commissioned by the US Army to lead the aural rehabilitation program at Deshon General Hospital, Butler, Pennsylvania, working with soldiers and sailors returning with noise-induced hearing loss from the Second World War. The program he built at Deshon had the greatest long-term effect on the emerging profession of audiology of any wartime program.

Beat · 1946

Dr. Raymond Carhart taught the first academic audiology course in the United States at Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois. In the same year, Hallowell Davis at Harvard coined the word "audiology" to replace the earlier term "auricular training." These two acts, Carhart's program and Davis's naming of the field, mark the conventional birth year of the profession.

Beat · 1961

Dr. William House and John Doyle performed the first cochlear implant surgery in Los Angeles, California, implanting a single-electrode device in an adult patient. Although the early device lasted only months before failing, House's work laid the foundation for 23 more years of development that led to the first FDA-approved cochlear implant in 1984 and a new clinical subspecialty within audiology.

Beat · 1988

James Jerger organized a founding group of 32 audiologists who met in January 1988 to form the American Academy of Audiology, the first professional organization devoted exclusively to audiology. The AAA was created in part because audiologists felt their professional interests were inadequately represented by the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), which covered both disciplines. The AAA's founding accelerated the drive toward a doctoral entry-level degree.

Beat · 1996

Baylor University awarded the first Doctor of Audiology (Au.D.) degrees in the United States, under the leadership of James Jerger. The Au.D. had been proposed since at least 1986 (ASHA Audiology Task Force) and championed by the Academy of Dispensing Audiologists since 1988. Baylor's action moved the degree from aspiration to reality.

Beat · 2007

The Au.D. formally replaced the Master's degree as the entry-level clinical degree for audiologists across the United States in 2007, making audiology one of a small number of US healthcare professions with a mandatory clinical doctorate at entry. The transition was accompanied by a notable dip in the BLS workforce count (12,950 in 1999 to 9,810 in 2004) as training programs converted, before recovery began.

Beat · 2022

The FDA established the over-the-counter hearing aid category in October 2022, allowing adults with self-perceived mild to moderate hearing loss to purchase and self-fit hearing aids without a professional evaluation. This marked the first formal federal policy change that allowed a device class previously tied to audiologist involvement to bypass clinical dispensing entirely. Audiology professional organizations debated the ruling's long-term practice impact; early data through 2023 showed OTC sales at roughly 1% of total hearing aid units distributed.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace audiologists? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+11%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 29-1181 (Audiologists): 14.2 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 15.7 thousand in 2035, a change of +1.6 thousand (+11.0%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (2.2% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
45.5%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 29-1181.00 Audiologists. Shown: human-rated β = 0.455, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.227 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.682; GPT-4-rated β 0.455. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for audiologists

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereManage over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid patients referred from retail or self-purchase, assessing whether mild-to-moderate hearing loss has progressed beyond OTC-appropriate range, evaluating patient experience with self-fitting and AI-adjusted devices (Lexie B2 Plus, Sony CRE-C10), determining if prescription devices and professional fitting are warranted, and documenting the clinical justification for escalation.

Manage over-the-counter (OTC) hearing aid patients referred from retail or self-purchase, assessing whether mild-to-moderate hearing loss has progressed beyond OTC-appropriate range, evaluating patient experience with self-fitting and AI-adjusted devices (Lexie B2 Plus, Sony CRE-C10), determining if prescription devices and professional fitting are warranted, and documenting the clinical justification for escalation.[4],[6],[7]

Where your edge is

The FDA OTC hearing aid category (active since October 2022) displaces the mild-to-moderate hearing loss patient from the professional dispensing pathway: a significant revenue change for dispensing-heavy practices. Reframe your clinical value around the diagnostic tier: OTC devices cannot perform audiometric testing, cannot identify retrocochlear pathology requiring medical referral, and fail for complex audiometric configurations. Position your practice around diagnostic accuracy and the complex cases OTC devices cannot serve, rather than competing on device price.

AI is sitting alongside you hereManage clinical documentation and NOAH patient records using AI-assisted note-taking in Auditdata Manage, reviewing AI-drafted clinical notes generated from fitting session data, verifying accuracy of auto-synced NOAH fitting parameters, approving notes before filing to EHR, and using practice management reporting tools to identify patients overdue for follow-up or hearing aid upgrades.

Manage clinical documentation and NOAH patient records using AI-assisted note-taking in Auditdata Manage, reviewing AI-drafted clinical notes generated from fitting session data, verifying accuracy of auto-synced NOAH fitting parameters, approving notes before filing to EHR, and using practice management reporting tools to identify patients overdue for follow-up or hearing aid upgrades.[8],[9]

Where your edge is

Auditdata Manage's AI note-taking automates the documentation burden from fitting sessions: the same shift-time recovery pattern seen in other clinical AI scribes. Your value is in reviewing AI-drafted notes for clinical accuracy and supervising the NOAH data sync so that patient records used for future fittings are correct. Build fluency with NOAH database management so you can audit fitting histories and catch AI sync errors before they affect a patient's next visit.

AI is sitting alongside you hereConduct teleaudiology follow-up appointments for hearing aid fine-tuning, receiving patient-submitted feedback via the ReSound Assist or Starkey TeleHear app, analyzing remote-adjustment requests in the manufacturer fitting platform, making programmatic adjustments to AI-managed hearing aid parameters, and pushing updated settings wirelessly to the patient's device without requiring an in-person visit.

Conduct teleaudiology follow-up appointments for hearing aid fine-tuning, receiving patient-submitted feedback via the ReSound Assist or Starkey TeleHear app, analyzing remote-adjustment requests in the manufacturer fitting platform, making programmatic adjustments to AI-managed hearing aid parameters, and pushing updated settings wirelessly to the patient's device without requiring an in-person visit.[10],[11]

Where your edge is

Remote fine-tuning platforms (ReSound Assist, Starkey TeleHear) let you serve patients in rural or time-constrained situations efficiently: one audiologist can manage more panel visits per week via telehealth. The fine-tuning adjustment itself is partially AI-managed (the hearing aid auto-adjusts between appointments), so your value in telehealth sessions is the clinical interpretation of persistent complaints that the AI cannot resolve, escalating to in-person when physical examination is needed. Build proficiency with at least two remote fitting platforms and develop the patient communication skills that make asynchronous hearing care work.

Where audiologists go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Medical and Health Services Managers

Experienced audiologists who develop practice ownership, clinic director, or multi-site management experience naturally grow into Medical and Health Services Manager roles: one of the fastest-growing management occupations (BLS projects growth 2024-2034). As audiology practices adopt AI hearing aid technology, teleaudiology platforms, and practice management software, clinic leadership increasingly requires clinical leaders who understand both the patient care side and the technology stack. Audiology group practices, ENT groups, hospital audiology departments, and hearing aid manufacturer field roles (clinical education, product management) all offer this pivot. An MBA in healthcare management or a master's in health administration (MHA) accelerates the transition and unlocks director/VP-level roles.

What you'd add
  • · MBA (Healthcare Management) or MHA, typically 18-24 months; many programs offer audiology-specific electives
  • · Practice financial management: RVU-based productivity modeling, revenue cycle for audiology (CPT coding for audiological testing and hearing aid dispensing), insurance contracting
  • · Clinical AI governance: evaluating AI hearing aid platforms, managing tele-audiology technology vendor relationships, overseeing AI documentation tool deployment
  • · HR and team development: hiring Au.D. graduates, managing hearing instrument specialists, and building training programs for AI-assisted workflow adoption
  • · Strategic growth: multi-site clinic expansion, hearing aid manufacturer partnership negotiation, OTC market positioning strategy
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of audiologists changed since 1944?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Western Electric 4C / military audiometer (vacuum-tube pure-tone testing)

    The aural rehabilitation programs of World War II were built around early pure-tone audiometers developed from telephone engineering research. The Western Electric 4C audiometer, introduced in 1922 and refined through the 1930s and 1940s, measured hearing sensitivity at individual frequencies by delivering calibrated tones through a headset. For the nascent audiologist, this instrument was the entire diagnostic toolkit: the audiologist adjusted a dial to find the softest tone the patient could hear, marked it on a chart, and repeated the process across frequencies. The resulting audiogram was the core clinical document of the profession from day one and remains so today. Vacuum-tube amplification in both the audiometer and early hearing aids meant large, power-hungry, desk-bound equipment; the clinician and patient were anchored to the examination room.

  • Transistor hearing aids + portable audiometers (wearable amplification era)

    In 1952 the first commercial transistor hearing aids appeared, marketed by Sonotone and Maico. Within two years, 97% of hearing aids sold used transistors rather than vacuum tubes. By 1956 the behind-the-ear design had arrived, and hearing aids had shrunk from box-and-wire assemblies to discrete wearable devices. For the audiologist, the transistor era transformed two aspects of practice: first, hearing aid fitting became a realistic outpatient clinical service rather than an inpatient rehabilitation program, because patients could wear the device home the same day; second, portable transistor-based audiometers made hearing screening feasible in schools and occupational health settings, dramatically expanding the population the profession could reach. The audiologist's role bifurcated into diagnostic assessment (audiometry, tympanometry) and device management (fitting, modification, troubleshooting of body-worn and behind-the-ear aids).

    Effect on the work

    The transistor hearing aid drove the growth of private practice audiology alongside the hospital and VA clinic settings that had dominated the early profession. By the late 1950s, commercial hearing aid dispensers were competing with audiologists for the fitting market, setting up a tension about the profession's scope that would persist for decades.

  • FDA cochlear implant approval + electronic impedance audiometry (diagnostic complexity era)

    In 1984 the FDA approved the House cochlear implant for use in deaf adults, calling it the first device to restore a human sense. For audiologists, this was a watershed: cochlear implant candidacy evaluation, surgical coordination, and post-activation programming (mapping) created a new subspecialty that was entirely within the audiologist's clinical scope. Mapping a cochlear implant requires setting electrical stimulation levels for each of many electrode channels, interpreting neural response telemetry, and conducting repeated programming sessions over months as the patient's auditory cortex reorganizes. No hearing aid fitter could perform this work. The CI era also coincided with widespread adoption of immittance audiometry (tympanometry and acoustic reflex testing), which added objective middle-ear measurement to the diagnostic battery and moved the audiological examination beyond pure subjective audiograms toward physiological assessment.

  • All-digital hearing aids (Widex Senso 1996) + Au.D. doctoral degree (Baylor 1996, universal 2007)

    In 1996 Widex launched the Senso, the first commercially successful all-digital hearing aid. Widex sold 100,000 units within six months of launch. The Senso delivered fully automatic digital signal processing: the clinician programmed the device via software on a personal computer, dialing in frequency-specific gain values, compression ratios, and noise-reduction settings that previously required laborious manual adjustment of trimmers and switches. The digital era transformed hearing aid fitting from a largely mechanical, trial-and-error craft into a software-based clinical science: audiologists could now see target-gain curves on screen, compare real-ear measurements against prescriptive targets, and transmit updated firmware to the device. In the same year, Baylor University awarded the first Doctor of Audiology (Au.D.) degrees under James Jerger, translating a decade of calls from the American Academy of Audiology and the Academy of Dispensing Audiologists into reality. By 2007 the Au.D. had replaced the Master's degree as the universal entry-level credential for clinical audiologists in the United States, completing the profession's transition from a sub-specialization within speech pathology to a doctoral-level independent clinical discipline.

    Effect on the work

    The digital fitting software transition reduced the time required for complex hearing aid adjustments and enabled remote fine-tuning capabilities that would be fully realized in later teleaudiology platforms. The Au.D. transition temporarily reduced the number of new practitioners entering the workforce as programs converted (the BLS 1999-2004 dip from 12,950 to 9,810), but established the credentialing foundation for the profession's subsequent wage growth.

  • Teleaudiology + real-ear measurement software (remote care and evidence-based fitting era)

    Through the 2010s, real-ear measurement (REM) systems with on-screen prescriptive target overlays became the standard of care for verifying that hearing aid fitting matched the patient's individual ear canal acoustics. Simultaneously, the first teleaudiology platforms emerged: audiologists could conduct follow-up programming sessions over secure video connections, adjusting digital hearing aid parameters remotely without requiring an in-person visit. This was particularly significant for rural and underserved populations. The Otoscan 3D digital ear canal scanning system, introduced by 3Shape in 2017, replaced traditional silicone impression-taking for custom earmold fabrication with a laser-based digital workflow, reducing remake rates by 33-50% and eliminating shipping delays. By 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic forced a rapid scaling of teleaudiology: clinics that had been cautious about remote care had no choice, and the profession demonstrated that many post-fit adjustment services could be delivered efficiently over video.

  • AI hearing aid chips + OTC devices (Phonak DEEPSONIC, Oticon DNN 2.0, FDA OTC category 2022)

    Two simultaneous developments arrived in 2022 that redefined the audiologist's practice landscape. In October 2022 the FDA established the over-the-counter hearing aid category for adults with mild to moderate hearing loss, allowing self-fitting devices to be sold in retail stores without audiologist involvement. Lexie Hearing distributed OTC aids through 12,000 US stores; a randomized clinical trial published in 2023 found OTC self-fitting statistically non-inferior to audiologist-fitted devices for mild-to-moderate loss. In the same period, Phonak introduced the Infinio platform with the DEEPSONIC dedicated AI chip (53 times the processing power of the prior generation, trained on 22 million real-world sound samples), Oticon deployed its second-generation Deep Neural Network (DNN 2.0, trained on 12 million sounds), and Starkey launched the Omega AI platform. These AI chips auto-classify acoustic environments and adjust processing parameters in real time without requiring manual audiologist programming between visits. The combined effect: the routine dispensing and follow-up visit workload for mild-to-moderate cases shifted substantially toward consumer self-service and automated hardware, while the complex diagnostic, cochlear implant, vestibular, and pediatric work that only a doctoral-level audiologist can perform became more prominent as a share of clinical activity.

    Effect on the work

    Early data through 2023 showed OTC sales at approximately 1% of total hearing aid distribution, far below initial fears of mass displacement. But the structural shift in where value is located within audiology practice is real: dispensing margins on routine fittings are compressing while complex clinical service volume is growing, pushed by the aging Baby Boomer cohort. Phonak's EasyGuard system, by reducing service appointment volume up to 38%, is already freeing audiologist chair time from routine follow-up toward higher-complexity diagnostic work.

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Audiologists employment and pay by year

On record since1944
Latest US employment13,660 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$95,780 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+11% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 21 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
1946100n/aEst., American Academy of Audiology Researched contextReport
19886,000n/aEst., Hearing Health & Technology Matters Researched contextReport
199912,950n/aBLS OEWS 1999 Official statisticReport
20049,810n/aBLS OEWS May 2004 Official statisticReport
2006n/a$57,120BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statisticReport
201012,860$66,660BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statisticReport
201112,490$68,390BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statisticReport
201212,060$69,720BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statisticReport
201311,550$71,170BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statisticReport
201412,250$73,060BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statisticReport
201512,070$74,890BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statisticReport
201612,310$75,980BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statisticReport
201712,020$75,920BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statisticReport
201813,300$75,920BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statisticReport
201913,590$77,600BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202013,300$81,030BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202113,240$78,950BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202213,940$82,680BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202313,880$87,740BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202414,730$92,120BLS OEWS May 2024 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2024 (pay) Official statisticReport
202513,660$95,780BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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