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Data Labs · Workforce

The retirement cliff

In Cardiovascular Disease (Cardiology), 40.1% of clinicians qualified before 1995 — a median graduation year of 1998.

Share of each specialty that qualified before 1995

Specialties with more than 2,000 clinicians on the Medicare rolls
CARDIOVASCULAR: 40.1%40.1%GENERAL PRACTI: 40.1%40.1%THORACIC SURGE: 38.5%38.5%ALLERGY IMMUNO: 34.5%34.5%OPHTHALMOLOGY: 33.7%33.7%GASTROENTEROLO: 33.1%33.1%PATHOLOGY: 32.9%32.9%PLASTIC AND: 31.9%31.9%PSYCHIATRY: 31.8%31.8%PULMONARY DISE: 31%31%CARDIOVASCULARGENERAL PRACTITHORACIC SURGEALLERGY IMMUNOOPHTHALMOLOGYGASTROENTEROLOPATHOLOGYPLASTIC ANDPSYCHIATRYPULMONARY DISE

These are the specialties where a large share of the workforce is closer to the end of a career than the start. It is a rough measure — graduation year is not retirement date, and plenty of people practise well past thirty years — but the spread between specialties is wide enough to be informative.

SpecialtyCliniciansPre-1995 Since 2015Median year
Cardiovascular Disease (Cardiology) 20,70540.1% 12.8%1998
General Practice 5,34940.1% 17.3%1998
Thoracic Surgery 2,97038.5% 10.1%1999
Allergy/Immunology 3,58634.5% 15.5%1999
Ophthalmology 18,34633.7% 20.1%2001
Gastroenterology 15,83433.1% 14.9%2000
Pathology 13,13132.9% 13.9%2001
Plastic And Reconstructive Surgery 4,73431.9% 15.5%2001
Psychiatry 28,53331.8% 28.3%2002
Pulmonary Disease 11,69631% 16.7%2001
Interventional Cardiology 5,18230.9% 10.4%2001
Urology 10,33130.5% 20%2002

When the current workforce qualified

All clinicians with a graduation year on file
1960–4: 8758751965s: 3,4333,4331970–4: 10,57010,5701975s: 24,73524,7351980–4: 50,04050,0401985s: 75,73575,7351990–4: 96,00396,0031995s: 126,785126,7852000–4: 151,314151,3142005s: 175,349175,3492010–4: 238,165238,1652015s: 319,407319,4072020–4: 305,131305,1312025s: 48,47748,4771960–41965s1970–41975s1980–41985s1990–41995s2000–42005s2010–42015s2020–42025s

How this was built

Graduation year comes from the CMS Doctors and Clinicians file and covers clinicians enrolled in Medicare, not the whole workforce.

Graduation year is a proxy for career stage, not a prediction. Someone who qualified in 1990 may practise for another fifteen years; someone who qualified in 2010 may already have left. The chart shows how a specialty's workforce is distributed, nothing more.

Specialties with fewer than 2,000 clinicians are excluded, because a small denominator makes these percentages swing wildly.

Rebuilt 2026-09-15 from the CMS National Plan and Provider Enumeration System · more experiments