How Much Do Doctors Make?

The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook reports a median annual wage of $275,930 for physicians and surgeons in May 2025, which works out to $132.66 an hour. The spread is wide. The lowest-paid 10 percent earned less than $76,560, and the top 10 percent earned more than $488,320.

Surveys of practicing doctors come in higher. Medscape polled more than 5,900 full-time physicians for its 2026 compensation report and found average total compensation of about $386,000, up 3 percent from the year before.

The two numbers measure different things. A median is the middle earner, so half of doctors make more and half make less. An average gets pulled up by the highest earners, and Medscape's sample only includes full-time doctors who answered its survey. If you want one number to plan around, the BLS median is the more conservative choice.

Specialty is where the spread comes from. The BLS breaks the median out for 17 physician categories, and here are 10 of them.

Pediatric surgeons top the BLS list at $559,030, and general pediatricians come last at $210,040, a gap of $348,990. All three primary care fields in the chart (family medicine, general internal medicine and general pediatrics) have medians below the overall physician median of $275,930.

Medscape's survey orders them a little differently. Its highest-paid specialty is orthopedic surgery at $611,000, and its lowest is pediatrics at $266,000. Both sources put surgical and procedure-based fields like cardiology, radiology and anesthesiology near the top and pediatrics at the bottom.

The BLS lays out the path: a bachelor's degree, 4 years of medical school, then 3 to 9 years of residency depending on the specialty, plus 1 to 3 more years if you add a subspecialty fellowship. Counting from your first day of college, the shortest route to a full physician salary takes 11 years.

You do get paid during residency, just not much. The AAMC's Class of 2025 debt fact card lists a preliminary median stipend of $66,986 for the first year after medical school. Raises are small from there. The AAMC's 2025 stipend survey, as tallied by The Match Guy, shows an unweighted mean of $68,166 for PGY-1 (first-year residents), $73,301 for PGY-3 and $81,807 for PGY-5.

A family medicine resident who finishes after 3 years goes from about $73,000 to a median of $244,180, a little more than triple.

Mostly, yes. The table pairs residency length, from the AMA's guide to specialty choice, with the BLS median for the same field.

The 3-year primary care residencies have the three lowest medians, and radiology, at 5 years, has the highest on this list. The pattern has exceptions. Anesthesiology trains for a year less than orthopaedic surgery and has a higher BLS median ($391,490 against $358,550). Neurological surgery has the longest residency the AMA lists, at 7 years, but the BLS doesn't report it as its own pay category, so it isn't in the table.

Every extra year of residency is a year of resident pay instead of physician pay. If you choose a 5-year program over a 3-year one, you spend 2 more years at resident pay, about $78,000 and then $82,000 by the AAMC's PGY-4 and PGY-5 means, before your salary jumps.

According to the AAMC fact card, 70 percent of the Class of 2025 graduated with education debt. The median among those borrowers was $215,000: $200,000 for graduates of public schools and $250,000 for private ones. For the class graduating in 2026, the median 4-year cost of attendance is $297,745 at public schools and $408,150 at private ones.

Put next to the pay figures, $215,000 is less than one year of the median physician's wage. The catch is timing: you borrow before you earn, and residency starts at about $67,000. Federal borrowing limits for new medical students are also changing, and the loan caps explainer covers what's different. If you're worried about application costs before you even get to tuition, AAMC fee assistance cuts them for students who qualify.

Pay also differs by gender. Medscape's 2026 report found men out-earning women by just over $102,000, a 31 percent difference, according to Physician on FIRE's summary of the major surveys. The same summary cites Doximity's 2025 report, which put the gap at 26 percent and found women earning $120,917 less than men after adjusting for specialty, location and experience.

• You don't choose your specialty now. You pick it during medical school. What you choose now is whether to start the path at all.
• Starting later shifts the timeline, not the pay. The training years are the same at any age, and the guide for older applicants runs through what that means.
• Both degrees lead to the same job. The BLS counts MD and DO physicians in one occupation, and the MD vs DO breakdown compares admissions and match data for each.
• The first gate is admission. That starts with the premed course requirements and an MCAT^® score. You can see what any score means with the PurpleCAT MCAT score guide.

• How much do doctors make an hour? The BLS median was $132.66 an hour in May 2025.
• What's the highest-paid specialty? Pediatric surgeons in the BLS data, at $559,030. In Medscape's survey, orthopedic surgery, at $611,000.
• What's the lowest-paid specialty? Pediatrics, in both the BLS data and Medscape's survey.
• Do residents get paid? Yes. The AAMC's preliminary median for the first year after medical school is $66,986.
• How long until you earn a doctor's salary? At least 7 years after college: 4 years of medical school and a 3-year residency.
• How many doctors are there? The BLS counted about 862,800 physician and surgeon jobs in 2025 and projects 4 percent growth from 2025 to 2035.

Last verified October 30, 2026, against BLS data for May 2025, the Medscape 2026 report as summarized by The DO and Physician on FIRE, and the AAMC's Class of 2025 debt fact card.