Physician pay in the United States
Every specialty with an estimate here, highest median first.
| # | Specialty | P25 | Median | P75 | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cardiology | $312,000 | $499,000 | $607,000 | A |
| 2 | Surgery (general and other) | $205,000 | $425,000 | $531,000 | A |
| 3 | Radiology | $257,000 | $418,000 | $495,000 | A |
| 4 | Anesthesiology | $264,000 | $408,000 | $493,000 | A |
| 5 | Orthopedic Surgery | $237,000 | $392,000 | $562,000 | C |
| 6 | Dermatology | $182,000 | $342,000 | $455,000 | B |
| 7 | Emergency Medicine | $199,000 | $336,000 | $430,000 | A |
| 8 | Pathology | $203,000 | $308,000 | $368,000 | A |
| 9 | Ophthalmology | $187,000 | $307,000 | $431,000 | A |
| 10 | Obstetrics & Gynecology | $197,000 | $296,000 | $367,000 | A |
| 11 | Psychiatry | $180,000 | $280,000 | $351,000 | A |
| 12 | Physicians, all other | $144,000 | $276,000 | $391,000 | A |
| 13 | Neurology | $193,000 | $271,000 | $361,000 | B |
| 14 | Internal Medicine | $163,000 | $261,000 | $353,000 | A |
| 15 | Family Medicine | $178,000 | $243,000 | $317,000 | A |
| 16 | Pediatrics | $157,000 | $215,000 | $270,000 | A |
| 17 | Physician Assistant | $119,000 | $136,000 | $161,000 | A |
| 18 | Nurse Practitioner | $118,000 | $132,000 | $155,000 | A |
Median by specialty
Drill into a state
How these figures are built
Four public sources, weighted by how much each can be trusted. Bureau of Labor Statistics wage surveys by metro area; public payroll disclosures, which list the exact pay of every physician employed by a state university or public hospital; Department of Labor H-1B filings, which record the salary actually offered for every visa hire; and Medicare payment data, which is revenue rather than pay and is used only where nothing better exists.
Public payroll is the anchor. It is the only source that is complete and exact for the people it covers. It reports academic and public-hospital pay, so private-practice figures are extrapolated from it through a per-specialty multiplier — and that multiplier is derived from data (H-1B offers at physician groups versus hospitals, payroll versus hospital offers) wherever there are enough rows, rather than assumed.
The BLS caps what it publishes at $239,200. Anything above prints as a symbol, so for most physician specialties the official "median" is a floor. Where the figure shown equals $239,200 with a C grade, that is what happened: real pay is higher and the other sources were too thin to say by how much.
Grades. A: two independent sources within 15%. B: one solid source, or two within 30%. C: a single source, a capped figure, or a Medicare-derived guess. Quote an A freely, a B with the range, and a C as a floor.
Built from 2025 BLS data, 8,302 H-1B filings.