Compared with the local labor market
Respiratory Care Practitioner pay vs. California
Across all employers in California, the median wage for Respiratory Therapists — about 18,650 people — is $104,820. Veterans Affairs pays a median base salary of $81,537 for this role, 22% below that figure — about the 16th percentile of local pay for the occupation.
Where Veterans Affairs sits in the local pay range
$77,010
$87,750
$104,820
$129,010
$145,510
Veterans Affairs median · $81,537
The bar is the range of annual wages for Respiratory Therapists across every employer in California, from the 10th to the 90th percentile, with the middle 50% highlighted. The marker shows Veterans Affairs’s median base salary for this role. Both figures are base pay only.
And across the country
Nationwide, the median wage for Respiratory Therapists — about 139,790 people — is $82,280. Veterans Affairs’s median base salary is in line withthat national figure, about the 48th percentile of pay for the occupation nationally.
$63,660
$74,520
$82,280
$98,730
$118,050
Veterans Affairs median · $81,537
Local and national wages differ for reasons beyond how well a job pays — cost of living, the mix of employers, and local demand for the occupation all move the California range relative to the national one.
Computed over the 3 of 4 people in this role paid at least $25,000 in base salary. The rest are part-year or part-time records, whose actual pay isn’t comparable to a full-time annual wage.
Median total compensation for this role at Veterans Affairs is $81,773, which includes overtime and employer-paid benefits. The benchmark above excludes both, so total compensation is deliberately not compared against it.
Benchmark: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025). BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) covers all employers in the area — private, non-profit, and government alike — so this is a comparison against the whole local labor market for the occupation, not against private-sector pay. OEWS wages are straight-time pay and exclude overtime, shift differentials, and employer-paid benefits, so the government figure shown here is base pay on the same basis. Total compensation is not comparable to it. Job titles are matched to the closest standard occupation, so the comparison is between similar work rather than an identical job classification.