Our methodology.
CRNASalary exists to answer one question accurately: what do Certified Registered Nurse Anesthetists actually earn? Because compensation decisions (job changes, contract negotiations, career investments) turn on this number, we hold ourselves to a higher standard of transparency than a typical content site.
This page documents where our data comes from, how we combine it, how often it’s refreshed, and what it can and can’t tell you.
Primary data sources
Our foundation is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OES) program, which surveys approximately 1.1 million establishments every six months and publishes annual wage estimates for more than 800 occupations. We draw from the OES release covering SOC code 29-1151 (Nurse Anesthetists) for national, state, and metropolitan statistical area figures. OES is the most rigorous public wage dataset available for CRNA jobs, and it forms the spine of every number on this site.
For employment-setting breakdowns, sign-on bonuses, regional variation, and compensation trends that OES doesn’t capture, we build modeled differentials calibrated against publicly reported aggregates from Marit Health, Medscape’s annual Nurse Anesthetist compensation report, and Becker’s ASC Reviewpay analyses, along with aggregate job-market averages from online job boards. We do not republish proprietary figures from the AANA Compensation and Benefits Survey; where our setting and experience curves align with AANA-published topline figures, we say so — but the dollar values shown on this site are our model, not AANA’s data.
For cost-of-living adjustments, we use the Bureau of Economic Analysis’s Regional Price Parities (RPPs), which measure price-level differences across states and metros against a national average of 100.
How we aggregate
Every compensation figure on this site is sourced from a specific dataset.
When multiple sources disagree (and they often do, because BLS methodology differs materially from self-reported platforms), we present a range and explain the spread rather than averaging sources together. Weighted averages obscure which inputs you’re actually seeing.
Our salary calculator uses BLS OES percentile bands as the baseline and adjusts within those bands using publicly reported differentials for setting, employment model (W-2 vs. 1099), experience, and call burden. The calculator shows its work: every estimate includes the underlying sources and a plain-English explanation of how it was derived.
How often we update
State and metro pages are refreshed with each BLS OES release. Major market-data releases (Medscape, Marit Health, Becker’s) trigger revisions on the pages they affect.
What we don’t claim
We don’t publish self-reported salary submissions without clear disclosure that they are self-reported. We don’t predict individual offers. Actual compensation varies by employer, call burden, schedule, benefits, and negotiation. We’re not a substitute for a contract review by a qualified professional. For high-stakes offer evaluation, we recommend working with a CRNA-specific contract review service.
Editorial review
Every salary guide on this site is reviewed by a practicing CRNA before publication.
Corrections
If you spot a figure that looks wrong, email contact@crnasalary.com with the page URL and the issue. We review corrections within days.