A specialist who diagnoses and treats hearing and balance disorders. You're testing hearing, fitting hearing aids, providing rehabilitation, and helping people communicate despite hearing loss.
Audiologists diagnose and treat hearing and balance disorders across the lifespan — from infant hearing screenings to hearing aid fittings for older adults to vestibular rehabilitation. The scope is wider than most people outside the field expect, encompassing everything from routine hearing evaluations to complex cochlear implant candidacy assessments and auditory processing evaluations.
Hearing aid dispensing is a significant part of most clinical audiology practices, and it involves both technical skill and counseling competency. Selecting appropriate devices, fitting and programming them, and helping patients adjust to amplification requires substantial patient education and follow-up. The adjustment to hearing aids is often a process rather than an event, and patients need support through it.
People who find audiology rewarding tend to have genuine patience for working with patients who often experience communication difficulty — that's the nature of the population you're serving. The functional impact of effective audiological care on someone's ability to participate in conversation, maintain relationships, and stay cognitively engaged is real and measurable. If you find the science of hearing interesting and the patient care dimension meaningful, audiology offers a clinical career with strong demand and the satisfaction of improving how people experience the auditory world.
Where this role sits in the broader career landscape — and where it can take you.
Roles like this one sit within a broader occupational category. The numbers below reflect that full landscape — helpful for context, but your specific experience will depend on level, specialty, and where you work.
Roles with similar work and overlapping career paths
View all Healthcare roles →A specialist who diagnoses and treats hearing and balance disorders. You're testing hearing, fitting hearing aids, providing rehabilitation, and helping people communicate despite hearing loss.
Median pay for an Audiologist is about $92K nationally, with the field ranging roughly from $62K to $130K depending on experience, employer, and metro (BLS).
Core skills for this role include Reading Comprehension, Active Listening, Speaking, Critical Thinking, and Social Perceptiveness.
Most people in this role hold a professional degree.
Employment in this field is projected to grow about 9.5% through 2034, with roughly 14,730 people working in it today (BLS).
Closely related roles include Audiology Extern, Licensed Audiologist, and Audiology Doctor (AUD).
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