2024 Optometrist Income Report

With increasing student loan debts, an ever changing economy, and a profession that continues to withstand disruption - many optometrists begin to question their associated worth as practitioners.  While the old phrase “comparison is the thief of joy” rings true in certain facets, comparison to get a true sense of trends in salary, debt load and net worth is vital for optometrists to understand whether their compensation is fair and also if they are on the path towards financial freedom.

The Salary Survey is nothing new to the world of optometry.  In fact, multiple are published per year.  However, nearly all of these Surveys contain the same gaps which make them less impactful from a statistical analysis perspective:

• (1) ⚠️ The Sample Size is Too Small - All optometry salary surveys before this one have n values roughly between 200 to 500 individuals. Considering the fact that there are over 40,000 practicing optometrists, cherry picking less than 1% of that population and extrapolating that average data to represent the whole simply does not work.  With 1912 verified optometrists submitting data across modalities and states, we are achieving a sample size of 5-10x most other studies.  While still not a perfect picture, more data points means more accurate and meaningful results.

• (2) ⚠️Not Enough Demographics are Accounted For - Most salary surveys conducted, look at 4 main demographics: modality, gender, region and age.  While these give an important general outlook, they contain key informational gaps.  In this study, in addition to the aforementioned demographics, we delve into more specific modalities, race/ethnicity and state specificity.

• (3) ⚠️Net Worth and Debt are Never Explored - Knowing how much money a cohort makes is one thing, but knowing how smart they are with that money and how they are using it to impact their future well being is quite another.

Our goal with this survey is to address the gaps that all past surveys contain and give the most up-to-date and accurate information on optometrist salaries, net worths and debt loads across the US.  This data can help associate ODs better negotiate their salaries as well as help owner ODs better judge potential offers to attract ideal candidates.