Dietitian Salary: What Dietitians Earn in 2026

The midpoint is $76,400. The middle half of the occupation, everyone from the 25th percentile to the 75th, earns between $63,080 and $89,340, a band of $26,260. This middle-half range gives more context than the median alone when comparing likely earnings.

The 10th percentile wage is $49,090, meaning 10% of workers earn that amount or less. The 90th percentile wage is $103,720, meaning 10% earn that amount or more. These figures describe the occupation at the time of the BLS survey.

The range does not represent guaranteed starting and maximum salaries. Lower and higher percentiles can reflect differences in experience, specialty, employer, management responsibility and location. Do not treat the $103,720 figure as a likely starting offer or the $49,090 figure as a career ceiling.

The 25th percentile is $63,080, the median is $76,400 and the 75th percentile is $89,340. Use all three when comparing salaries or planning a budget; none is a prediction or guarantee for an individual worker.

Every state plus the District of Columbia is here, with the same percentile set the national figures use. It starts sorted by median, highest first. Click any column heading to sort by that column instead. Sort by dietitians employed and the order rearranges, because pay and jobs are not the same map: only 3 of the ten highest-paying areas are also among the ten with the most dietitian jobs.

16 of the 51 areas have a median above the national $76,400, and 35 sit at or below it. The midpoint of all the state medians is $71,610. California employs the most dietitians at 8,720 jobs, roughly 11% of the national total.

State medians based on a few hundred jobs can vary more between releases than medians based on thousands. Alaska shows a median dietitian salary of $87,980, the 3rd highest median of the 51 areas, based on 130 jobs. California shows $98,850 on 8,720 jobs. Both figures are valid estimates, but the smaller employment base is more sensitive to changes in hiring and retirement.

These 8 areas each report fewer than 300 dietitians employed. If you are looking at one of them, read the whole row rather than the median alone. The distance from the 25th percentile to the 75th tells you far more about what a job there pays than a single midpoint drawn from a small base.

The wage survey reports one occupation, dietitians and nutritionists, under SOC 29-1031. Everyone in the 77,570 jobs behind the $76,400 median is in that one bucket, whether or not they hold the RDN. So the figures on this page describe the whole occupation in one distribution, RDNs and everyone else together.

What the RDN decides is which jobs you are eligible for in the first place, and that is the more consequential question anyway. Since 1 January 2024 the Commission on Dietetic Registration has required a graduate degree to sit the registration exam. The degree is only one requirement: the exact program and pathway must also meet ACEND and CDR requirements, including supervised practice. Verify that status in ACEND’s directory.

Licensure is written state by state, and it is the piece most people check last and should check first. Before you enrol anywhere, read the rules in the state you intend to practise in, because they set what you are allowed to call yourself and what you are allowed to do. Programs in federal dietetics fields are compared separately, and the methodology explains why accreditation is deliberately not inferred or scored.

The wage data points at four levers. They are not equally strong, and the one most people reach for first is the weakest of them.

Every figure on this page is SOC 29-1031, the dietitians and nutritionists code. The work below is counted under other occupation codes, and the 62 programs on this site split across three tracks that point at different parts of it. Two of the three are not routes to the RDN, which is worth knowing before you pick one on price.