FlightWay / Careers / Acupuncturists
Healthcare
Acupuncturists
Diagnose, treat, and prevent disorders by stimulating specific acupuncture points within the body using acupuncture needles.
- Sector: Healthcare
- Preparation: Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed
- O*NET code: 29-1291.00
What you'll actually do
The activities O*NET rates highest for this occupation, most important first. Numbers are out of 100.
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Assisting and Caring for Others
central to the job — rated 93/100 for importance.
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Documenting/Recording Information
central to the job — rated 89/100 for importance.
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Getting Information
a major part of the work — rated 83/100 for importance.
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Updating and Using Relevant Knowledge
a major part of the work — rated 82/100 for importance.
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Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships
a major part of the work — rated 81/100 for importance.
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Performing for or Working Directly with the Public
a major part of the work — rated 80/100 for importance.
Diagnose, treat, and prevent disorders by stimulating specific acupuncture points within the body using acupuncture needles. May also use cups, nutritional supplements, therapeutic massage, acupressure, and other alternative health therapies.
What it takes
Two numbers per line: the level the work expects, and how important it is to doing the job well. Both are O*NET ratings, already on a 0–100 scale.
Skills
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Active Listening
Needed at a solid working level (59/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
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Social Perceptiveness
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
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Critical Thinking
Needed at a solid working level (54/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
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Service Orientation
Needed at a solid working level (48/100), and rated 69/100 for importance.
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Speaking
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 66/100 for importance.
Knowledge
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Customer and Personal Service
Needed at expert level (76/100), and rated 87/100 for importance.
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Medicine and Dentistry
Needed at a high level (62/100), and rated 77/100 for importance.
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Psychology
Needed at a high level (71/100), and rated 71/100 for importance.
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Biology
Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 68/100 for importance.
Abilities
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Oral Comprehension
Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
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Oral Expression
Needed at a solid working level (57/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
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Deductive Reasoning
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
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Near Vision
Needed at a solid working level (55/100), and rated 72/100 for importance.
How people get in
O*NET places this occupation in Zone 5 — extensive preparation needed. That is a statement about what employers typically require, not a rule about you.
Education
Graduate school — a master's, a PhD, an MD or a JD, depending on the field.
Experience
More than five years of related experience is common before the title is yours.
Training
This is a long runway. Start the prerequisites early or the timeline slips a year at a time.
What it pays
These are typical healthcare compensation bands by employer tier — sector-level figures, not a measured salary for Acupuncturists specifically. Treat them as the shape of the market, then check a real posting for the number.
Mayo Clinic · Johns Hopkins
$130k – $300k
Regional Health Systems
$100k – $180k
Clinics & Private Practice
$80k – $130k
How the work tends to run
Each line below is read off a single O*NET activity rating for this occupation — named, so you can disagree with it.
- You are in front of the public, so the job is partly performance.From “Performing for or Working Directly with the Public”
- Long-running relationships carry the work; the same people come back.From “Establishing and Maintaining Interpersonal Relationships”
- People depend on you directly, and that is the point of the role.From “Assisting and Caring for Others”
How FlightWay scores your fit against this
No black box. Here is the whole method, factor by factor.
- 1. You answer a short quiz
- Your answers build a profile across the same 161 O*NET dimensions this page is describing — skills, knowledge, abilities and work activities. Same axes, so the comparison is like-for-like.
- 2. We correlate the two profiles
- Fit is a mean-centered cosine — a correlation between the SHAPE of your profile and the shape of Acupuncturists. Centering matters: raw similarity between any two occupations sits at 0.70–0.85 because all work shares a common profile, so without it every career would look like a match.
- 3. The number you see is personality fit only
- "Would I want this work" and "am I ready for this work" are different questions, and averaging them answers neither. So readiness — what your résumé, coursework and projects prove — is scored separately and shown next to fit, never blended into it.
- 4. Every factor is visible
- You can open any match and see which dimensions pushed it up and which pulled it down. If you disagree with the number, you can see exactly where it came from.
More in Healthcare
See your fit for Acupuncturists
Ten questions, about 90 seconds. You get your match against Acupuncturists and 782+ other real careers — with the reasoning shown.
Take the quiz Open in FlightWayOccupational data on this page comes from the O*NET 30.3 Database, published by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). O*NET is a registered trademark of USDOL/ETA. FlightWay is not endorsed by, and USDOL/ETA is not responsible for, anything built on that data — see our terms. What is ours is the comparison, the score and the plan.