What a physician earns, by metro

A physician in Burlington-South Burlington has a median wage of $517,900. In South Arkansas nonmetropolitan area the median is $58,700. That is a 8.82-fold difference for the same job title, which is unusually wide even by the standards of a country this large — and it means a national average for this role is close to meaningless.

The band is wide — outcomes vary a lot

The top tenth of physicians earn $452,360 or more; the bottom tenth earn under $69,170. That is a 6.54× gap within the same occupation, in the same year. A spread this wide means the job title is not what determines pay — specialisation, employer type, seniority or book of business is. Expect the early years to sit near the bottom of the band rather than the middle, and treat the $265,930 median as a waypoint, not a destination.

Why the range is 8.82× wide

The top of the table is spread across several states rather than concentrated in one, which points away from a pure cost-of-living story. Where a role pays 8.82× more in one market than another without a single expensive state dominating, the usual cause is local demand density — a few metros where the industry clusters and employers compete for the same small pool. The physician concentration table further down shows where that is happening.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 29-1229. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 436 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 92 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.