Your wage range
Registered dietitian, annual wage by percentile
The credentials you trained beside
Mean annual wage, same BLS survey, same release
The offer vs. what the loan leaves
Your benchmark wage is the sticker price. Subtract the annual student-loan payment and you see your real earning power — at each career stage, for this location.
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Program cost
Repayment
What you keepAnnual loan payment
Know your number. Then make the case.
This is the data. The next tool turns it into an employer-ready, evidence-locked compensation case — the same negotiation SBAR structure used to argue for an RDN pay floor, generated for your role and state. Join the list for first access.
Get first access → See the debt side →Methodology & sources
Where these numbers come from
- Wages & percentiles: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 release. State estimates plus metropolitan (MSA) and nonmetropolitan-area estimates — pick a metro or rural area to drill in. Registered dietitian = SOC 29-1031. Nonmetropolitan ("rural") areas are BLS balance-of-state regions, so a single area can cover a wide stretch of a state.
- Experience proxy: BLS doesn't publish wages by years of experience, so the percentile ladder stands in for it — new graduates cluster near the 10th–25th percentile; mid-career near the median; long-tenured practitioners near the 75th–90th. It's an approximation, not a guarantee.
- Peer professions: physician assistant (29-1071), nurse practitioner (29-1171), physical therapist (29-1123), registered nurse (29-1141), occupational therapist (29-1122), speech-language pathologist (29-1127), respiratory therapist (29-1126) — state mean wages, same release. The United States view uses the BLS national means.
- Small states: smaller states have wider sampling variance; a few percentile values reflect that. Treat thinly-populated states as directional.
- Educational only — not financial or career advice. Full analysis: the National RDN Crisis Memo 2026.