Chiropractor job description

Thirty-six percent of the 61,700 chiropractor jobs the Occupational Outlook Handbook counted in 2025 belonged to self-employed chiropractors, which is why the BLS wage survey, limited to people on a payroll, finds only 39,630. Those employed chiropractors earned a median of $79,200 in May 2025. The bottom tenth made less than $43,460 and the top tenth more than $146,080. In offices of chiropractors, which hold 57 percent of the jobs, the median was $78,460. The Handbook projects 9 percent growth from 2025 to 2035, much faster than average, with about 2,600 openings a year.

Core Duties and Responsibilities

The day turns on assessment. A chiropractor evaluates how the spine and neuromusculoskeletal system are working, takes the patient's history, examines them, and reads x-rays to find the source of a complaint or to rule out a fracture or disease. Treatment is a series of manual adjustments to the spine or other joints, sometimes paired with massage, rehabilitative exercise, electrical muscle stimulation, heat, or cold. Chiropractors lay out a course of treatment, counsel patients on nutrition, exercise, sleep, and stress, order blood work or imaging when a case needs it, apply braces or tape, and refer patients elsewhere when the problem is outside their care. Owners also market the practice, hire the staff, and keep the records.

Common Skills and Technologies

O*NET ranks active listening first among the skills chiropractors use, followed by reading comprehension, speaking, and critical thinking. The Handbook adds dexterity for the adjustments and empathy for patients who are often in pain. The software O*NET finds in employer postings is the ordinary office kind, Word, Excel, and Outlook, and O*NET's technology list adds medical, scheduling, and accounting software.

Education, Training, and Career Path

Chiropractic is in O*NET's Job Zone Five, and 82.1 percent of respondents said the job calls for a doctoral degree. That degree is the Doctor of Chiropractic, which usually takes four years after at least three years of undergraduate study. Every state licenses chiropractors. All 50 either accept or require Parts I through IV of the National Board of Chiropractic Examiners exams, and some add a state jurisprudence exam on local law. Some chiropractors go on to postgraduate diplomate programs in areas such as orthopedics and pediatrics, and a licensed chiropractor can qualify to do commercial driver physicals after a 12-hour federal training course and a certification exam.

Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-1011.00 Chiropractors, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-1011.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-1011, https://www.bls.gov/oes/tables.htm. BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Chiropractors, https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/chiropractors.htm. National Board of Chiropractic Examiners, https://www.nbce.org/links-to-nbce-exams/. Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, https://www7.fmcsa.dot.gov/medical/driver-medical-requirements/national-registry-certified-medical-examiners.