No one publishes a trustworthy count of physician job openings by specialty, and the available numbers disagree with each other by a factor of eight. On a single day in August 2026, three physician job boards advertised 16,842, 26,109, and 138,064 open positions [9][10][11]. The federal government, measuring the same labor market a different way, projects roughly 23,600 openings per year for every physician and surgeon in the country combined [1].
Those numbers are not in a fight. They are answering different questions. For the wider view of hiring conditions this year, start with our breakdown of the 2026 physician job market. This piece is narrower. It is about the counting, and about how to tell which question a number is answering before you let it change your plans.
Why the number in your head is probably wrong
If you have spent an evening after a shift scrolling a job board, you have probably had one of two reactions. Either the screen is full and you wonder why your inbox is empty, or the screen is thin for your subspecialty and you start quietly panicking about the fellowship you just finished.
Both reactions come from treating a posting count as an opening count. A posting is an advertisement. An opening is a funded seat somebody is trying to fill. One opening can generate five postings, and one posting can sit live for a year behind a seat that was filled in March.
Start with a number that has a denominator
The Bureau of Labor Statistics counted 839,000 physicians and surgeons working in the United States in 2024 and projects 863,200 by 2034, a gain of 24,300 jobs, or 3 percent. It also projects about 23,600 openings a year across the decade, most of them created by physicians leaving the workforce rather than by new positions being created [1].
That last point matters more than the growth rate. You will compete in a replacement market. Somebody retires, somebody moves, somebody goes part time. Growth adds roughly 2,400 net jobs a year across all of American medicine, smaller than a single large health system.
BLS also publishes headcount and projected growth by detailed physician occupation. Those two columns are the honest denominator for any posting count you see.
Table 1. Physician workforce size and projected change, 2024 to 2034
Source: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, employment projections table, 2024 to 2034 [1]. Note that BLS has no separate occupation code for hospital medicine, so hospitalists sit inside the 340,700 counted as physicians, all other.
Two things stand out. Psychiatry and dermatology are projected to grow fastest among the named specialties, at 6 percent. General pediatrics and obstetrics and gynecology are projected to grow 1 percent, and BLS attributes the pediatric ceiling to an expected decline in the child population [1].
One caveat before you build a career plan on this table. The BLS openings figure counts growth plus permanent exits from the occupation. It is not a list of jobs you can apply to this month, it misses locums and part-time work, and it does not capture internal moves. Use it as a scale check, not a job feed.
Three boards, one day, three different markets
Here is the same market read three ways. Every figure below was pulled from the boards themselves on August 26, 2026.
Table 2. Live physician postings by specialty on three boards, August 26, 2026
Sources: JAMA Career Center browse by specialty and homepage total [11]; PracticeMatch physician job search facets [9]; DocCafe physician jobs by specialty [10]; BLS employment by detailed occupation, 2024 [1]. All board figures accessed August 26, 2026 and will have changed since.
Look at the internal medicine row. DocCafe advertised 10,598 internal medicine positions against a national workforce of 73,200 general internists, one live ad for every seven internists in the country. Family practice showed 17,081 against 116,000 family physicians. Neither can be a literal vacancy count, and DocCafe is not claiming otherwise. The site counts advertisements.
Where the extra postings come from
Four mechanisms explain most of the inflation, and you can verify all four yourself on any board in about ten minutes.
One posting, several tags. On PracticeMatch on August 26, 2026, the 53 specialty filters summed to 27,813 while the site reported 26,109 open positions. The state filters summed to 33,709, about 29 percent above the site total [9]. A position advertised across a two-state region gets counted in both states.
Different category depth. DocCafe sorts postings into 185 specialty categories and splits cardiology alone into six [10]. JAMA Career Center uses 38 categories [11]. Finer categories produce more rows, more overlap, and a bigger apparent market.
The same seat sold twice. PracticeMatch lets you filter recruitment type to in-house or agency [9]. That filter exists because one funded position can be advertised by the hospital and by two or three contingency firms at the same time, each with its own posting.
Postings that outlive the job. Boards syndicate listings from other boards and from employer applicant tracking systems, and nothing forces a stale listing down. A seat filled in spring can still be visible in autumn.
Our guide to job boards, recruiters, and the hidden job market covers who is posting what, and why the same position reaches you from three directions.
You will find articles quoting a precise share of listings that are so-called ghost jobs. Those estimates run from roughly one in seven to one in three, come from vendor surveys that define the term differently, and no federal statistical agency publishes a figure, so we are not putting a number on it. The verifiable point stands without one: specialty counts on a single board sum to more than that board’s own total, so they cannot be added and should not be read as vacancies.
The recruiting data is a better signal than the posting count
Recruiters track something closer to what you want to know: how long a real search stays open, and how often candidates say yes. The Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment surveys in-house recruitment departments annually. Its 2025 benchmarking report, covering searches conducted in 2024, found the following [4].
The typical participating organization ran 96 physician and provider searches in a year, with large systems running several hundred.
The most common physician searches were hospital medicine (10.8 percent of searches), family medicine (10.6 percent), general obstetrics and gynecology (7.8 percent), and internal medicine (5.8 percent).
Median time to fill was 118 days for physicians, against 77 days for advanced practice providers. Surgical and specialty searches ran longest, with oncology at a median of 332 days.
Physicians accepted 71 percent of offers in 2024, down from 83 percent in 2023.
Nearly half of all searches were still open at the end of the year, and median physician turnover was 7.3 percent.
Read those from the candidate side. A median 332-day oncology search means the hiring committee has been looking for close to a year by the time your CV arrives. That is leverage. A 71 percent acceptance rate means three in ten physician offers were turned down, so employers are hearing no more often than they used to.
AMN Healthcare’s 2025 review, built from 1,420 recruiting engagements between April 2024 and March 2025, found family medicine remained its single most requested physician search [5]. The trend underneath is the interesting part. Primary care accounted for about half of AMN’s physician engagements fifteen years ago and 22 percent in the 2025 review [6]. Demand did not disappear. It shifted toward specialists and advanced practice providers. For the specialty-by-specialty picture behind that shift, see which physician specialties are most in demand in 2026.
Geography moves the number more than specialty does
The Health Resources and Services Administration counted 8,467 designated primary medical Health Professional Shortage Areas as of December 31, 2025, covering 92.3 million people, with 48.18 percent of assessed need met. HRSA estimates 15,604 additional practitioners would be needed to remove those designations [7].
Set that against the board data from the same period. On PracticeMatch on August 26, 2026, California showed 2,517 postings, Texas 2,437, and Florida 2,256, while Wyoming showed 193 [9]. Postings cluster where people cluster. Unmet need clusters somewhere else. Those are different maps, and a physician who only reads the first one will conclude the market is tight when it is mostly just crowded in the places everyone wants to live.
The Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey gives you direction of travel, with one caution. Health care and social assistance reported 1,347,000 openings in June 2026 at a 5.3 percent rate, down from 1,494,000 in May and 1,466,000 a year earlier, against 7.4 million total openings economy-wide [2][3]. That series counts nurses, aides, and social workers alongside physicians, so it tells you where the sector is heading, not how many physician seats are open.
Want the version of this that updates itself?
Filter live openings by specialty and state on the market board, and see current counts with the as-of date attached instead of a marketing headline.
How to read physician job openings in your specialty, step by step
Twenty minutes the first time, five minutes a week after that.
Write down your denominator first. Look up your specialty in Table 1 above. If you are a neurologist, the entire national workforce is 8,300 people. Any board showing thousands of neurology openings is not showing you vacancies.
Deduplicate before you count. Sort by employer and location. Postings for the same health system in the same city, posted within a few weeks of each other, are usually one search. Count employers and locations, not listings.
Filter to in-house postings where the board allows it. That single filter strips out the agency reposts and gets you closer to the number of organizations actually running a search.
Read the posting date, not just the posting. Anything live for more than 60 days is either stale or genuinely hard to fill. Both are worth knowing, and the second one is worth applying to.
Look up time to fill for your specialty rather than the posting count. AAPPR publishes median days to fill by specialty group [4]. A long median tells you the employer needs you more than the volume of ads does.
Cut by geography, then count again. Run the same query for your target state, then for the two states next to it. The ratio between those three numbers is the most useful thing on the page.
Track the same query weekly for four weeks. The level is noise, the trend is signal. If your specialty in your state moves from 40 to 55 over a month, something real is happening. If it sits at 40 with the same employers rotating, you are looking at advertising.
One more denominator: who you are actually competing against
The 2026 Main Residency Match offered 44,344 training positions and filled 41,482, the largest match on record [8]. Roughly that many physicians finish training each year and look for work.
That is the number that should shape how you feel about a thin-looking board. You are not competing with 839,000 practicing physicians. You are competing with the cohort finishing your specialty this year plus whoever is unhappy enough to move, which in most specialties is a few hundred to a few thousand people spread across fifty states. The market is smaller and more local than a national posting count makes it look, in both directions.
Key takeaways
Posting counts are advertisements, not vacancies. Three boards showed 16,842, 26,109, and 138,064 physician postings on the same day in August 2026 [9][10][11].
Specialty counts on a single board cannot be added. PracticeMatch state filters summed to 29 percent above that site’s own reported total [9].
BLS projects about 23,600 openings a year for all physicians and surgeons, and most of them come from replacement rather than growth [1].
Time to fill is a better read on your leverage than volume. Median physician time to fill was 118 days in 2024, and 332 days for oncology [4].
Geography moves the number more than specialty does. Postings concentrate in large states while 92.3 million Americans live in a primary care shortage area [7][9].
This article is educational. Labor market figures change constantly, and every board number in it carries the date it was collected. Verify current counts before making a career or relocation decision.
REFERENCES
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Physicians and Surgeons." Occupational Outlook Handbook. Employment projections 2024 to 2034; employment by detailed occupation, 2024. Last modified August 28, 2025. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.htm. Accessed August 26, 2026.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Job Openings and Labor Turnover Summary, June 2026." USDL-26-1289. Published August 4, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.nr0.htm. Accessed August 26, 2026.
U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. "Table 1. Job openings levels and rates by industry and region, seasonally adjusted," June 2026 release. Published August 4, 2026. https://www.bls.gov/news.release/jolts.t01.htm. Accessed August 26, 2026.
Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment. "Physician Recruitment Teams Face Consistent Demand and Lengthy Search Times, According to AAPPR Report." Published September 10, 2025. Reports findings of the 2025 AAPPR Physician and Provider Recruitment Benchmarking Report: Search Dynamics and Trends, covering searches conducted in 2024. https://aappr.org/2025/09/10/physician-recruitment-teams-face-consistent-demand-and-lengthy-search-times-according-to-aappr-report/. Accessed August 26, 2026.
AMN Healthcare Physician Solutions. "2025 Review of Physician and Advanced Practitioner Recruiting Incentives." Published August 2025. Based on a representative sample of 1,420 search engagements conducted April 1, 2024 to March 31, 2025. https://www.amnhealthcare.com/amn-insights/physician/whitepapers/2025-review-of-physician-and-advanced-practitioner-recruiting-incentives/. Accessed August 26, 2026.
Commins J. "Doc Comp Holds Steady, Sort of, in 2025, But Still Pricey." HealthLeaders. Published August 5, 2025. Reports AMN Healthcare comments that primary care fell to 22 percent of physician search engagements. https://www.healthleadersmedia.com/cmo/doc-comp-inches-2025-varies-widely-specialty. Accessed August 26, 2026.
Health Resources and Services Administration, Bureau of Health Workforce. "Designated Health Professional Shortage Areas Quarterly Summary," First Quarter of Fiscal Year 2026. Data as of December 31, 2025; published February 15, 2026. https://data.hrsa.gov/default/generatehpsaquarterlyreport. Accessed August 26, 2026.
National Resident Matching Program. "Results and Data: 2026 Main Residency Match." Published May 2026. 44,344 positions offered and 41,482 filled. https://www.nrmp.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/Main_Match_Results_and_Data-2026.pdf. Accessed August 26, 2026.
PracticeMatch. "Physician Jobs." Site-reported total of 26,109 open positions with specialty and state facet counts. https://www.practicematch.com/physicians/jobs. Accessed August 26, 2026.
DocCafe. "Search Physician Jobs by Specialty." Site-reported total of 138,064 physician jobs across 185 specialties. https://www.doccafe.com/physician-jobs/specialty. Accessed August 26, 2026.
JAMA Career Center. Homepage total of 16,842 live job openings and browse by specialty counts across 38 categories. American Medical Association. https://careers.jamanetwork.com/ and https://careers.jamanetwork.com/moreterms/specialty/100/. Accessed August 26, 2026.
FAQs
There is no authoritative live count. BLS projects about 23,600 openings a year for physicians and surgeons as a whole, averaged over 2024 to 2034 [1]. Job boards showed between 16,842 and 138,064 live postings on August 26, 2026 [9][10][11]. The true number of funded, actively recruited seats sits well below the largest board totals and is not published anywhere.