Primary care specialty
Family Medicine: Salary, Residency & Career Guide
Continuity-based care for patients across ages and health conditions.
Typical Training
3 years
3-year family medicine residency
Attending Compensation
$325,040
Average Total Compensation
Employment outlook
+3%
Projected Job Growth
Relative Competitiveness Index
33 / 100
Lower
Start in Medical School
M1 to M4 Preparation
Practical experience, projects and rotation planning.
See the Medical School RoadmapAttending Compensation and State Wages
U.S. Attending Compensation
$325,040
Average Total Compensation
BLS State Median Wages (Separate Data Series)
Highest published state medians. Select another state above for its figure.
Resident Pay by Institution
3-year family medicine residency.
2026–27 salaries, five published training-institution examples.
Selected institution
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI
$77,049/ year
Pay varies by institution and postgraduate year.
Schedules and Work Setting
Schedule and Call
A suburban office panel, a rural full-scope physician delivering babies and a hospital-based family doctor may share a specialty name but have radically different call and procedural lives. Ask for clinic panel size and coverage details.
Practice Settings
Community clinics, primary care, urgent care, rural hospitals and outpatient practices.
Procedures and Clinical Work
- Office procedures
- Joint injections
- Preventive screening
- Chronic disease management
Fellowship Training
Fellowship Expectation Index
1 / 5
Fellowship Options
Common Fellowship Duration: 1 year(s) beyond residency. Sports medicine, geriatrics and other focused fellowships commonly add a year.
Full-scope and outpatient family medicine can be practiced after residency. Added training is a deliberate choice for sports medicine, geriatrics, addiction or hospice practice, not an automatic extra year.
Direct Practice
Outpatient primary care, many rural and broad-scope generalist roles.
Specialized Practice
Formal subspecialty certification or narrowly focused jobs can require a fellowship or other qualifications.
Choosing a Path
Choose residency for actual scope; OB, inpatient coverage, procedures, rural training; rather than assuming a future fellowship will repair missing core exposure.
Potential Fellowship Pathways
- Sports medicine
- Geriatric medicine
- Hospice and palliative medicine
- Addiction medicine
Fellowship Careers From This Residency
Choose a subspecialty to see its training requirements, clinical work and preparation pathway.
Preparing in M1 Through M4
Continuity clinics reveal how family physicians manage preventive care, chronic disease and changing social circumstances across repeated visits. Scope varies widely between practices.
Research or QI
A longitudinal clinic or community-health project with measurable follow-up is more telling than one-off events. Examples include BP control, no-show reduction or preventive outreach.
Common Mistake
Talking about a preference for lifestyle without understanding whether you want hospital work, OB, rural procedures, addiction care or primarily outpatient continuity.
Preparation by Year
- 1Find a family physician whose practice follows a panel over time; observe how medication, housing, transportation and family context change care.
- 2Compare a broad-scope rural clinic with an urban continuity practice before deciding which family medicine identity appeals to you.
2027 ERAS Signals: 5.
Ask a resident this: How much actual continuity panel ownership do residents get, and can they train in obstetrics and inpatient care if they choose?
MD vs DO Match Outcomes
1,427 of 1,444 matched to their preferred specialty
1,316 of 1,354 matched to their preferred specialty
MD vs DO difference: 1.6 percentage points
Applicant Considerations
2024 historical preferred-specialty outcomes were strong for both MD and DO seniors, with a comparatively small difference. DO students should focus on program fit and desired scope more than a perceived general barrier to entry.
DO Application Strategy
Compare teaching hospitals on maternity, procedural, rural and inpatient training rather than simply whether they have DO residents. If interested in a specific geographic mission, show a sustained connection to that community.
Job Outlook
+3%
Projected Employment Growth
2025 to 2035, BLS occupational projection
Regional hiring depends on employers, workforce supply and patient demand.
AI and the Specialty
Potential Workflow Changes
Documentation, preventive outreach and decision support may be augmented; continuity, communication and clinical judgment remain core.
Sources & Data Notes
Reviewed . National attending compensation uses Doximity's 2026 specialty survey (2025 pay) where available, then verified specialty-specific Medscape, Marit or Salary.com estimates. Doximity, Medscape and Marit report total compensation; Salary.com models base salary. Survey averages, modeled salaries and BLS wage medians measure different populations and must not be interpreted as identical metrics. BLS May 2025 state wages are shown separately and exclude self-employed physicians. The ophthalmology BLS category excludes pediatric ophthalmologists. State figures may be missing, top-coded, or suppressed. Job outlook uses BLS 2025–2035 occupational projections; it is not a local vacancy forecast. Resident stipend examples reflect published institutional scales for 2026 to 2027, by postgraduate year, not specialty. Stanford includes housing in its reported base salary; other institutions handle allowances differently.
The Relative Competitiveness Index uses a fixed score of 25 plus 1.75 times the 2024 U.S. MD preferred-specialty unmatched percentage, rounded, then applies the same 1.225 multiplier to every specialty. Neurological Surgery is 98/100; the score is not the applicant's chance of matching. It is not a 2026 estimate or DO-specific score. The MD and DO percentages compare different unadjusted applicant cohorts who ranked that specialty first. They do not account for application strategy, program selection, scores, or geography. Ophthalmology and urology have separate specialty match processes; other pathways may lack suitable NRMP cohorts.
The 1–5 Fellowship Expectation Index is an editorial assessment of customary career paths, not a measured participation rate or requirement. For residency profiles, compact training labels put specialty years before the clinical base or preliminary year; e.g. 3+1 means three specialty years and one clinical base year, even though the clinical year comes first. Fellowship-defined careers are presented in the separate fellowship explorer. Schedules, procedural scope, preparation suggestions, and potential AI effects depend on the program and practice setting; they are qualitative descriptions, not guaranteed outcomes or forecasts of physician replacement.
For Family Medicine: Doximity 2026, Average Total Compensation, reported under “Family Medicine.” The national estimate must not be treated as a state-specific compensation figure.
Family Medicine: Editorial judgment based on standard family medicine practice and available focused-training routes. Specialty-specific roadmaps describe illustrative activities, not mandatory publication, shadowing-hour, rotation, or skill requirements. Common fellowship routes: Sports medicine, geriatrics and other focused fellowships commonly add a year.