Abstract
Abstract
Audiology requires doctoral-level education, yet its earnings trajectory has remained comparatively modest within U.S. healthcare. This article examines historical trends in audiology wages using national Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data, benchmarking absolute wage levels, growth trajectories, and degree-based comparisons against 33 other healthcare occupations. Results indicate that the rate of wage growth slowed following the profession's transition to doctoral-level entry relative to the preceding master's-dominant period. Audiology wages also remained closely coupled to speech-language pathology wages throughout the study period. When benchmarked against healthcare professions grouped by minimum educational requirement, audiology's mean wage clustered within the master's-degree wage band rather than the doctoral-degree band, a pattern consistent with credential–wage decoupling. These findings suggest that increased educational requirements alone were insufficient to reposition audiology's economic standing, with structural factors–including reimbursement dependency, device-anchored revenue models, employment-based compensation structures, and scope fragmentation–implicated as consistent explanations. Earnings function here as a workforce sustainability signal with implications for recruitment, retention, and professional positioning within U.S. healthcare.