Transcriptionist pay

What It Means

Transcriptionist pay is what someone earns for listening to recorded speech and typing it up as written text. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) tracks one branch of the work, medical transcriptionists, who turn reports dictated by doctors and other healthcare practitioners into written records; their median pay was $19.43 an hour, or $40,410 a year, in May 2025. None of the sources checked for this page gave a national figure for general transcription, such as meetings or interviews, and if a job quotes pay per minute of audio, the converter below turns it into an hourly figure.

How People Say It at Work

• "They pay by the audio minute, not by the hour."
• "An hour of interview audio took me most of the afternoon."
• "She does medical transcription from home for a clinic."

The Breakdown

The numbers, from BLS (May 2025), for medical transcriptionists

Worked example. A transcription job pays $1.00 per audio minute (an example rate). If you finish 15 minutes of audio in an hour of work, that's $15.00 an hour, $4.43 under the BLS median for medical transcriptionists. Finish 20 minutes in the hour and it's $20.00, just above it.

What the result means. A per-minute rate only makes sense next to how fast you work, and the converter turns it into an hourly figure you can set beside the BLS median. Your own speed is the number to measure, since the sources checked give none.

What moves the number

• Speed. Under per-minute pay, every extra audio minute you finish in an hour raises the hourly equivalent.
• The kind of work. BLS's figures are for medical transcription; general transcription isn't covered by them.
• Employee or self-employed. The survey behind these figures covers wage and salary workers and leaves out the self-employed.

Good to Know

The figures come from BLS's Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey, reported in the Occupational Outlook Handbook, and describe medical transcriptionists on business payrolls. O*NET lists titles such as transcriptionist, medical transcriber and medical scribe in the same occupation. A transcriptionist working for themselves sets their own rate and isn't in these figures.

Related Terms and Categories

• Freelancing

  Working for yourself, selling your skills to different clients by the project or the hour instead of holding a long-term job with one employer.

• Gig work

  Short-term, on-demand jobs or sales, often found through an app or website, such as rides, deliveries, errands or selling goods; the IRS treats the pay as taxable income.

• 1099 contractor

  An independent contractor whose pay a business reports on Form 1099-NEC; they're self-employed, so no tax is withheld and they owe self-employment tax.

• Self-employment tax

  The Social Security and Medicare tax self-employed people pay on their own profit: 15.3% of 92.35% of net earnings, owed once those reach $400 a year.

• Remote work

  Doing your job from somewhere other than your employer's workplace, most often from home, for some or all of the workweek.

• Side hustle

  Paid work done alongside a main job or other commitments, such as freelancing, delivery driving or selling goods; the IRS treats the income as taxable.

Pay, rates and costs