Where can I check income data myself, and how often is it updated?
Where to check this yourself, and how often it changes
That's a smart instinct — figures like this are only useful if you know where they come from and whether they're stale by the time you read them.
| Source | What it covers | Update rhythm |
|---|---|---|
| BLS OEWS (occupation code 29-1291, "Acupuncturists") | Employed acupuncturist wages by state — mean, median, 10th/90th percentile | Annual, released each spring; current figures are the May 2025 reference period, released May 2026 |
| Five Branches 2026 TCM CareerGuide — ROI & Real-World Career Trajectories | Career-stage income ranges (associate → independent → owner) for Northern California | School-published; check the page itself for its edition date |
| BLS public API — api.bls.gov | The same underlying data, if you want to query it directly | Same annual spring cycle |
Two honest caveats worth carrying with those numbers, straight from the source notes: BLS only counts salaried/employed acupuncturists — private-practice owners aren't in there at all — and where a state's sample is too small, BLS suppresses the estimate rather than publish an unreliable one (Pennsylvania's is fully suppressed this cycle). So a self-employed practitioner's real income, especially in the early years, won't show up in these tables at all.
We last pulled the BLS figures in 07/2026 and the CareerGuide page in 08/2026 — both are worth a fresh look on the live pages above rather than treating anything quoted elsewhere as current.
Is there a particular state or career stage you're trying to size up?
Sources
- Five Branches University — 2026 Northern California Tcm Careerguide From Roi To Real World Careertrajectories 4 checked 2026-08
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025) checked 2026-07
Last reviewed: