Am I Being Underpaid? How to Benchmark Your Physician Salary

If you are asking "am I underpaid as a physician," here is the fastest honest answer: compare your total compensation (not just base salary) against specialty-specific percentile data from at least two independent surveys, then check whether your pay percentile matches your production percentile. If your compensation sits below the 25th percentile while your wRVU output sits at or above the median, you are very likely below market. This guide walks you through that comparison, step by step, in about an hour.

Why This Question Is So Hard to Answer From Inside Your Own Job

The core problem is information asymmetry. Your employer almost certainly subscribes to benchmark data. Most physicians do not, in part because the industry-standard dataset, MGMA DataDive, starts above $3,000 per year for a subscription.

So physicians fall back on gut feeling, and gut feeling is unreliable in both directions. In Medscape's 2026 Physician Compensation Report, 53 percent of physicians said they personally feel fairly compensated, up from 48 percent the year before, even as most respondents said the profession as a whole remains underpaid. Average reported compensation was about $386,000 in 2025, up roughly 3 percent, which modestly outpaced the 2.7 percent core inflation rate at the end of 2025.

Feelings are not data. Your percentile position, matched against your production, is. The rest of this article shows you how to find it.

Am I an Underpaid Physician? Start With Total Compensation, Not Base Salary

Base salary is the number everyone quotes and the wrong number to benchmark. What surveys measure, and what you should tally, is total cash compensation: base pay, productivity bonuses, quality and value-based incentives, call and medical directorship stipends, and any retention or signing money paid out during the year.

The gap between base and package is not trivial. AMN Healthcare's 2025 recruiting review put the average physician starting salary at $403,000, with an average signing bonus of $38,215, and found that signing bonuses, relocation allowances, and CME funds together added nearly $59,000 on top of salary in typical offers. If you compare your base against a new hire's full package, you will misdiagnose the gap.

One caution before you compare anything: read each survey's definition of compensation. Most report total cash compensation and exclude the value of health insurance and standard benefits, so add those in separately when weighing one job against another. For a full walkthrough of what physicians earn by specialty and state, see our 2026 physician salary guide.

How to Benchmark Your Physician Salary: Know What Each Dataset Actually Measures

No single source is "the truth." Each major benchmark is built differently, and the differences change what the numbers mean. Here is the landscape as of mid-2026.

The structural distinction that matters most: employer-reported surveys (MGMA, AMGA) reflect what organizations say they pay, and because they are collected annually and published months later, they can lag the live market; physician-reported surveys capture more current sentiment but carry self-selection bias. The defensible move is to use at least one of each type, and to treat recruiting data like AMN's as a signal of what the open market is offering right now rather than what incumbents earn.

How to Read Physician Salary Percentiles Without Fooling Yourself

Percentiles are simple in definition and routinely misused in practice. The median is the midpoint of the reporting sample: half of comparable physicians earned less, half earned more. The 75th percentile means you out-earn three quarters of the sample. None of these is a grade. Median is not "fair," and 90th is not "greedy."

Three rules keep the numbers honest:

Rule 1: Never read a compensation percentile alone. Your pay percentile only means something next to your production percentile. A physician producing wRVUs at the 75th percentile while being paid at the median has a documented mismatch, and that mismatch, not a general feeling of being underpaid, is what moves a negotiation. The reverse also holds: median pay for 40th percentile production is not underpayment.

Rule 2: Match the cohort and the year. Compare against your specialty, your region or practice type where the sample supports it, and the same data year as your own numbers. Thin specialty-by-state cells can make percentile estimates unstable, so check the reported sample size before leaning on a cut. Benchmark years matter more than usual right now: MGMA's newest data on 2025 shows median compensation still climbing modestly even as wRVUs fell in 16 of 23 common specialties and total encounters fell in all 23. When pay and productivity diverge across a survey year, the comp-per-production math shifts underneath you.

Rule 3: Normalize your FTE before you compare. If you are 0.7 clinical and 0.3 administrative, comparing your total pay against 1.0 clinical FTE benchmarks understates your position. Benchmark the clinical portion against a prorated clinical figure and the administrative portion against medical director or leadership benchmarks separately.

The Self-Benchmarking Flow: Seven Steps to a Defensible Answer

Set aside about an hour. The output is a one-page summary you can use in a compensation conversation, a contract renewal, or a job search.

1. Assemble 12 months of total compensation. Pull your last 12 months of pay stubs and tally base pay, productivity payouts, quality incentives, call stipends, directorship fees, and any bonus dollars actually received. Note employer retirement contributions and CME funds separately so you can compare package to package later.
2. Pull your production data. Request or download your wRVU totals, encounter counts, and panel size from your employer's productivity dashboard or billing reports for the same 12 months. If your employer cannot produce your wRVU data, that is itself a finding worth writing down.
3. Normalize to clinical FTE. Divide your clinical compensation by your clinical FTE so you are comparing full-time equivalents. Benchmark protected administrative, teaching, or research time separately.
4. Gather at least two independent benchmarks. Use one employer-reported source and one physician-reported source for your specialty, matched to your region and practice type where sample sizes allow.

   Live Market Board Benchmarks (As of July 2026):

   Cohort	25th Percentile	50th Percentile (Median)	75th Percentile	90th Percentile
   Overall Physician Market (All Specialties)	$280,000	$391,000	$560,000	$730,000
   Internal Medicine	$220,000	$280,000	$380,000	$520,000
   Family Medicine	$200,000	$250,000	$330,000	$450,000
   Pediatrics	$195,000	$245,000	$325,000	$440,000
   General Surgery	$320,000	$450,000	$700,000	$900,000
   Cardiology	$380,000	$550,000	$850,000	$1,100,000
   Orthopedic Surgery	$550,000	$795,000	$1,100,000	$1,400,000

5. Locate both of your percentiles. Place your normalized total compensation on the compensation distribution and your wRVU production on the productivity distribution. Write both numbers down side by side.
6. Adjust for context. Before concluding anything, account for call burden, payer mix, geography and cost of living, academic mission, malpractice and tail coverage, schedule flexibility, and the dollar value of benefits. A package at the 45th percentile with no call, full tail coverage, and a four-day week can be a better deal than a 60th percentile package without them.
7. Interpret the gap and pick a next move. A compensation percentile that trails your production percentile by 20 or more points, after honest context adjustments, is a below-market signal worth acting on. Options include a data-backed internal conversation, a market test, or a planned move at your next contract window.

Check your percentile against live data on the market board.

How to Know If You Are an Underpaid Doctor: Six Red Flags

If you want a quicker gut check before running the full flow, these are the patterns that most reliably indicate a below-market situation:

1. Your production percentile exceeds your compensation percentile by 20 or more points. This is the single clearest quantitative signal, and it is the comparison employers least want you to run.
2. Your pay has been flat for two or more years while the market moved. Median physician compensation has been rising roughly 3 to 5.6 percent per year across the major surveys: about 3 percent in Medscape's 2026 data, 3.17 to 5.57 percent in MGMA's 2024 data, and 4.9 percent across the AMGA dataset. Two flat years is a real-terms pay cut against that backdrop.
3. New hires in your market are being offered more than you earn. The average starting salary in AMN's 2025 review was $403,000, ranging from $258,000 for pediatricians to $576,000 for orthopedic surgeons, and average signing bonuses jumped 23 percent year over year to $38,215. Total incentives average nearly $59,000 across signing, relocation, and CME.

   Live Advertised Starting Offer Benchmarks (As of July 2026):

   Specialty	Starting Base	Avg. Signing Bonus
   Pediatrics	$258,000	$30,000–$40,000
   Internal Medicine	$268,000–$290,000	$56,903
   Family Medicine	$275,000–$280,000	$47,417
   Anesthesiology	$465,000	$59,583
   Gastroenterology	$495,000–$552,000	$47,174
   Orthopedic Surgery	$576,000	$50,000–$100,000+

4. Your conversion factor is below your specialty's median. If you are paid on production, the dollars-per-wRVU rate matters as much as the wRVU count. See our guide to what a fair $/wRVU rate looks like for how to evaluate yours.
5. Your employer says your pay is "market competitive" but cannot name the survey, year, or percentile. A real benchmark has a source, a data year, a cohort, and a percentile. If those four facts are not documented, the claim is marketing, not measurement.
6. You fit a documented pay gap pattern. Doximity's 2025 report found a 26 percent gender pay gap, with women physicians earning $120,917 less on average than men after adjusting for specialty, location, and experience. Medscape's 2026 data showed the gap exceeding $100,000 for the first time in its survey's history. Group-level gaps do not prove any individual case, but they are a reason to benchmark rather than assume.

What to Do If the Numbers Say You Are Underpaid

Resist the urge to lead with frustration. Lead with the one-page summary from the flow above: your total compensation, your production, both percentiles, your sources, and the data years.

Then ask your employer one precise question: which survey, data year, and percentile is my compensation based on? The answer, or the absence of one, tells you how the conversation will go. From there, the most reliable way to establish your market value is to test it, and our guide on how to evaluate a physician job offer objectively covers how to run that process without burning bridges.

Timing matters too. Budget season, contract anniversaries, and documented panel or production growth are the natural windows. A benchmark conversation initiated with data, at the right time, is a professional norm, not a betrayal.

Key Takeaways

• Benchmark total cash compensation, not base salary, and add the value of benefits when comparing full packages.
• Use at least two independent data sources, one employer-reported (MGMA or AMGA) and one physician-reported (Medscape or Doximity), matched to your specialty, region, and data year.
• Your compensation percentile is only meaningful next to your production percentile; a 20-plus point gap in favor of production is the clearest underpayment signal.
• Market pay rose roughly 3 to 5.6 percent per year in the latest surveys, so multi-year flat pay is a real-terms cut.
• "Market competitive" without a named survey, year, cohort, and percentile is a claim, not a benchmark.

This article is educational and is not tax or financial advice. Consult a CPA or licensed financial advisor about your specific situation.

This article is educational and is not legal advice. Contract terms vary by state and employer. Have any agreement reviewed by a licensed attorney before signing.

Ready to see where you actually stand? Check your percentile against live data on the market board.

References

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3. Doximity. "2025 Physician Compensation Report." Doximity, published July 31, 2025. https://www.doximity.com/reports/physician-compensation-report/2025, accessed July 20, 2026.
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7. AMN Healthcare. "2025 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives." AMN Healthcare, published August 2025. https://www.amnhealthcare.com/amn-insights/physician/whitepapers/2025-review-of-physician-and-advanced-practitioner-recruiting-incentives/, accessed July 20, 2026.
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