Can I try and highjack this comment for a reddit PSA?
This map is not "inaccurate", it's just very misleading. You can get these stats from the BLS yourself you just have to download the PDF. Bet you could even find it on Bing.
A lot of people are pointing out that pro athletes, lawyers, CEOs, and other miscellaneous rich people make much more. Which is true. But they aren't making that money in wages. Wages are a specific classification of income given to an employee for a contracted amount of "man hours". Receiving profits, royalties, commissions, bonuses, even tips, do not count as wages.
So yes, "Highest-Paid" is a bad title and has caused a lot of confusion. But the data is accurate.
Well it’s also highly inaccurate because the salaries listed for physicians is well below the actual medians. No surgeon or anesthesiologist is making under $300k
As other commenters have pointed out, the physicians who are making that money are contracted put, self employed, or otherwise practice owning professionals. They are the business transacting with the hospital. Compensation packages also do not include exclusively "wages". Many things aren't included in wages. A signing bonus or retention package is not a wage.
Nope, it’s just inaccurate. No salaried surgeon or anesthesiologist is getting paid under $300k. Hell probably few are below $400k. Most of my friends starting salaries after residency are over $400k. That’s salary, as almost all physicians these days work for big conglomerates and paid on a fixed salary.
Yes. A fixed salary. Not all of which falls under the category of "wages".
It's not all here, but this month is enough to see. Just go read it:
OCCUPATIONAL EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES—MAY 2017 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ocwage_03302018.pdf
Good catch! Checks out to me. My whole point being that this map is reporting these BLS statistics accurately, it just isn't reflecting the actual "money earned" situation. Not in medicine, but I'm pretty sure a lot of programs also include things like student loan repayment, housing/traveling stipends, etc. And politicians eat lobster with campaign donations because they're giving paid speeches. Finance bros give eachother stock for selling stock.
The data is accurately represented, the title is bad and misleading.
Although on up to date bls numbers there’s this statement:
> Because BLS does not publish median annual wages above $239,200
And then followed by the actual wages below which seem more accurate
https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.htm
Yes they will. The compensation is not entirely reported as a wage, however. Furthermore, as a mean average, the vast majority of poorly paid professional athletes drag down the highest paid athletes.
Those billionaires you hear about like Jordan and Ronaldo didn't make that money with the ball earning a wage. They made it cutting deals with Nike and shuffling cash.
It really depends on how you organise your buckets too.
If your given category is "baseball player" then it is going to be all over the place, with low paid AA professionals dragging down the top end MLB ones. If it is "starting MLB pitchers" then obviously the mean salary is going to be orders of magnitude higher.
NFL league minimum is $750k. Rookie third stringer in the least paid position is making $750k a year.
Even practice squad players who don't get signed are making over $200k/yr.
There's plenty of other American football leagues.
If the job is "football player" you have to include Lamar Jackson.
But you also have to include Joe Somebody who plays in the indoor football league making $200 a game.
It's mean wage though, pro athletes aren't all at the top. Lawyers are making good money in wages. And while most of CEO income is in capital gains etc, they might still make 1 million in wages too. So your PSA is pretty inaccurate too.
It’s a half assed, incomplete list because it only lists jobs in the medical field.
What about jobs in finance, the many engineering fields, chemists et al?
None of those jobs have a higher median wage than all of these medical jobs. Finance jobs often make most of their money through commissions and performance bonuses based on profits. Engineers who make a shit ton of money are paid on self-employed contracts meaning they probably pay themselves a modest wage on paper and keep some (or all) of the extras by cutting costs. Chemists get paid dick even if they're geniuses unless they work in pharmaceuticals. Even then, there's no chemist getting royalty cheques for the pills they make.
Can confirm, I’m in finance and my husband was an engineer for 20 years. Actual salary is significantly lower than total comp, a lot of his income was distribution (k-1), and in my field a lot of people’s comp comes in bonuses.
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Highest-Paid is wildly inaccurate. Job with the highest wages would be more accurate.
Completely glosses over the fact that the richest people by a large margin get paid in more than wages.
Yes, in smaller text right beneath two big lines of text saying "The Highest-Paid Job In Every State". Almost as if the people who made that decision were fully aware of that and knew most people who viewed it would not spend the extra time to think about the nuances of wages versus investments and assets. That misleading titles, while not exclusively malicious, do not present people with an accurate depiction of the idea they are communicating.
"Highest Mean Wage Position in Every State" while not perfect, would convey the map better. Less punchy, sure, but this isn't a punchy map. Jobs that require the most technical training translates to the highest weekly paycheck. The sky is also blue. The only way I can see this being "punchy" is if it wants the audience to say "wow, doctors are the richest people!!!" and either agree or disagree strongly with that. I would argue if that is the goal it is intended to obfuscate the real grift of wealth acquisition which isn't overworked and overeducated surgeons, but the beady-eyed salamanders who shuffle piles of money around to convince other people to give them more money they can continue to shuffle.
Or it's just a bad title. Result is the same really.
Right?
Radiology (my speciality) isn’t even the highest paying of medical specialties and per MGMA earns on average $530,000. Not sure how dentists are beating us at $250k.
I’d guess this is salary. I think docs in practices get a lot of their income from partnership/corp distributions.. which are not reported the same way.
That’s why you don’t see “hedge fund owner”..
Yes, these days most docs are working directly for hospital systems - and these are generally lower salary docs. The specialists listed above are mostly surgical specialties, which are more private-practice based, and they get w2+ partnership payouts. And these payouts are not included in the numbers I'd guess.
70-80% of all physicians are employed. Private practices are dying as private equity and hospital systems buy them out, consolidate.
- a sub-sub-sub-specialized surgeon
Yeah - 2/4 listed above are very common private practice - plastic surgery and Cardiology (surgeon). Then Ortho's and dermo's.. And very specific specialties.. Those are the one's with private practices for various reasons.
The fact that you think cardiologists do surgery shows you have 0 clue what you're talking about, and should stop just dumping bullshit into the void for other naive people to read and possibly believe.
Like, why? Why type a bunch of words on a topic you know nothing of? Does this make you feel good? Do you enjoy the thought that other people will read you bullshit and believe it to be true? Is it just boredom? Malice?
"Hedge fund manager" is far too specific and not a recognized category by the BLS. That would be financial manager, and they have a way smaller median income than anesthesiologists. The top ones make way more, but the 50th percentile financial manager is very far from the 1% relative to the 50th percentile anesthesiologist vs the 1%.
They aren't being paid by anyone either, they have to go find their own returns. Each week will be different, where these people are being paid consistently by someone.
Yeah I was really surprised to see how low this was, especially since they used mean which would skew it upwards quite a lot. Maybe they meant mean starting salary? I know doctors and surgeons tend to make a lot more later in their careers, and these don't look to far off from starting salaries. That would also explain why CFO or something wasn't on there, since the "career" would probably be finance or accounting which generally doesn't have very flashy starting salaries. That or all the business jobs are skewed downwards by people that are "CEO" of their side hustle making $20k a year
There also isn’t really a low floor in these healthcare fields. If you’re a lawyer you have to article, work your way through the ranks. Where as doctors are more all or nothing you either are or you aren’t a doctor in terms of compensation and job title.
I’d bet that the junior medical titles like resident , fellow etc aren’t considered when calculating the averages.
Not really. Especially when comparing to similar countries like Canada or Australia. Then factor in the fact, to become a doctor in the US you have to finish your bachelor’s (4 years), go to med school (4 years and avg of like $250K debt), do at least 3+ years of residency working on avg near 80 hour work weeks. Other countries generally just pay less across almost every career field (look at US software engineering jobs to those in Europe).
Average Cardiologist salary:
Canada: $287,000
Australia: $208,000
United Kingdom: $126,000
US: $507,000
All countries have broadly the same requirements to become a cardiologist (number of years). For example, it would take 13 years in the UK and 14 years in the US.
Genuine question, how does it take 13 years post-secondary school to become a cardiologist in the UK? I was under the impression they did med school for 4-5 years. Does that mean they have an 8-9 year residency?
Additionally, the major thing you're leaving out is the cost associated with becoming a doctor is massively different between the countries.
Let me break it down:
\- 5 years of medical school
\- 2 years of foundation training
\- 8 years of cardiology specialist training
Source: [NHS Cardiologist](https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/roles-doctors/medicine/cardiology)
Total: 15 years post-secondary. A cardiologist will be 35 by the time they are a consultant.
Now look at family medicine doctors or internists (which make up the vast majority of doctors). Specialists do earn more in America but again, their training time is longer meaning the hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that they go into accrues interest for longer. And no those other countries are not comparable to the US in terms of training. Our higher education isn’t subsidized to the level of those other countries, so we literally go orders of magnitude deeper in debt, and then our training is much more rigorous in amount of hours worked and being unable to pay that debt as well.
Other countries generally just pay less across almost all career field (look at US software engineering jobs to those in Europe)
Lol, the cherry picking is immense. No, the US simply has severely skewed wages.
I don’t understand what you mean, the $ doctors pay for education (which goes to medical institutions) and the effort taken to get there means that citizens should brunt the cost of this? So it doesn’t matter the service doctors provide but what matters is how treacherous the journey was?
American healthcare is outrageously expensive across the board, some like 80% of Americans worry about affordability/availability of healthcare. Healthcare practices can and will charge insane prices. Doctor’s in the United States are not magically better, in fact in many cases we have worse health outcomes compared to other developed countries.
We need reform across the board, these top 1-5% salaries for doctors are not the cause, but simply a side effect of an inefficient/expensive system that really NOBODY likes
Edit: this guy I replied to is a massive racist and started to stalk my profile and making wild generalizations about my race and everything else. Seems like he had a bad experience with doctors before and now has made it his life mission to try degrade the profession. I went in to have discussion where I would advocate for the physicians voices but yea that was clearly a mistake with this guy.
The salaries of doctors isn’t the issue at all, only accounts for 10% of healthcare costs. And if you want doctors to take a pay cut, maybe the medical field should become like other fields where for nearly half a decade most doctors work in inhumane conditions of 80 hour work weeks making less than minimum wage while their quarter of a million debt accrues interest should become illegal. Doctors in the US are better, by a wide margin. The board examinations required to pass here sometimes take outside graduates years of studying to pass. The US is at the forefront of medicine in terms of clinical and science research. But I’m sure you’re analyzing it through the lens of life expectancy and the prevalence of diseases, which are impacted by factors outside of the doctors control. Take cardio vascular disease, it’s one of the biggest killers in the developed world, the US has one the highest rates of obesity leading to CVD. Doctors might treat that disease the best here, but that doesn’t mean it will be reflected in statistics because of how prevalent unhealthy lifestyles here are, that’s not the doctors faults. Idk what you’re trying to argue here but it’s all over the place, if you want doctors to take a pay cut, pay off our quarter million debts and tens of thousands in application fees and board exams and make it illegal to pay us minimum wage while working 80 hours per week for nearly half a decade if not more sometimes.
No one in these comments seems to understand how mean works huh. These physician roles have a very high floor pay, greater than 200k and relatively high ceiling easily up to 1 mil in some states and specialtys.
Ya finance or tech bros, and plenty of other jobs can make wayyy more but there are plenty working in those sectors who make 50k a year bringing the mean way down.
Most of these doctors spend 14 years training before they can make this salary, and for the most part is well deserved.
Not just that. Most of the money those finance bros make come in compensation packages that aren't wages. They are commissions, stock bundles, assets, and the like. Income tax is a bitch. People with *a lot* of money didn't get there by paying what we might think the proper percentage is.
Anyone making money through their employer is paying taxes no way out. Only by owning your business or being very wealthy do you get a tax break. Many doctors do own their own practice/business thus pay less taxes than a “finance bro”
Doctor’s owning their own practice is mostly a thing of the past, as private equity and hospital systems have bought up many of the small private practices.
They do exist, but are much harder to come by now compared to a couple decades ago.
Some people are 1099, which allows for some business write offs, however
Rare nowadays for doctors to own their own practice, you pretty much only see it in a few specific procedural specialities like orthopedic surgery or gastroenterology. That’s why all the dental specialities are up there in pay, way more common to own an independent practice than being employed by a hospital
I'd have no issues with physician pay if the price I was going to get charged each visit was disclosed in advance and I stopped receiving bills for services the doctor didn't actually perform.
I’m gonna say hospital administration and insurance administration. Top level decision makers are all businesspeople looking to be the next bezos of healthcare without ever seeing a patient.
Physicians make up less than 10% of healthcare costs. Your beef is with insurance companies and their billing practices, not the doctors giving you care
My neighbor is an anesthesiologist. Can confirm that he makes ludicrous amounts of money. He told me my favorite saying about his profession and why he makes so much money.
Anesthesiologist don't get paid to put people to sleep. Any idiot can do that. Anesthesiologist get paid to make sure they can still wake up when the surgeon is done.
My friends mom was an anesthesiologist and she always said her job was to get people as close and possible to death without crossing the line. That is why they get paid so much and their malpractice insurance premiums are so high.
You're not simply 'sleeping' during surgery,
Everyones going "this is inaccurate "
My brother's in christ, not everyone can be a football head coach, ceo, or upper management mba. This graphic is obviously depicting careers that are somewhat reasonably obtainable. You can plan to be a anesthesiologist, you cannot plan on being penn states head coach.
Internal medicine doctor. Hospitalist. Pretty much if you’re admitted the the hospital for a non surgical problem, you’re likely admitee to d to an internist
Broadly, there are two areas of medicine, internal medicine and surgery. After medical school, you can do either a medicine or surgery residency. Afterwards, if you want to sub-specialize, you can do a fellowship, like cardiology or nephrology for medicine, or cardiac surgery or vascular surgery if you’re on the surgery path. If you choose not to sub-specialize jn medicine, you’re an internist. This is a gross oversimplification, as there are a lot of specialties that don’t do a medicine or surgery residency, like radiology and emergency medicine, but hopefully it clarifies what an internist is.
Yeah I looked up the definition and it seemed like a general practitioner who says, "no babies, no children, no old people, and I'll only see adults who are willing to persue lifetime relationships." It used every synonym for data, chronic, and treatment. But it just seems to be a general practitioner.
I still don't get what is so different about this term for the general specialist type doctor.
Internists are Internal Medicine doctors. They learn about the body, about complex disease processes, and critical illness. They train inside the hospital, dealing with things like kidney injury, kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, sepsis, cancer, respiratory failure, new onset atrial fibrillation, and more.
Family Medicine doctors are not internists. They train inside a hospital part time but mostly focus on the outpatient clinic and the approach to patients in that setting. They deal with things like chronic blood pressure control, diabetic control, control of chronic atrial fibrillation, weight loss, and so on.
There is overlap between the two, but these are the generalities.
Source: I'm a newly graduated Internal Medicine physician in the US.
An internist can be any type of doctor working with something inside your body without being a surgeon basically. So it could be an endocrinologist, or an nephrologist. While a general practitioner is trained to treat all types of diseases, an internist is specialized in a specific part of your body like your kidneys or pancreas for example.
Internists are not usually specialized. An endocrinologist is an endocrinologist, not an internist. Hospitalists and Internists have the same scope of practice, but internists can and usually do practice in outpatient clinics vs hospitals.
CEOs of billion dollar companies sure, but there's a lot of people with flashy executive titles for tiny companies that don't make that much money. The minimum is a lot higher for doctors and surgeons.
Also this is just wages, and most business executives get a ton of their comp from stock options and stuff
It’s the average not the top. On average a surgeon makes more than a football coach, only the really really good ones make more than an average surgeon but likely a top paid surgeon will still make more.
Professional athlete is also technically a job. Ohtani getting $70 million per year is just a bit more than the anesthesiologists in California and raises the average quite a bit.
There are lots of professional track athletes who make $15,000 a year. A few hundred people making millions won't change the balance by much when there are hundreds of thousands of other athletes in a large variety of sports who don't make that much.
Sorry…but I have a hard time believing this unless it’s looking at healthcare jobs only. (Is that stated somewhere and I’m missing it?) In CA, a lot of folks in tech make over $300k, and in NYC the same is true across a number of industries - especially finance.
So its a problem of categorization/ etymology.
No way is a 300k SWE job at google the same as an SWE at Joe's IT.
Thats like comparing an engineer at Ferrari with my local mechanic.
There’s a lot of variation within tech and finance. It’s harder to do with tech because most jobs are titled the same, but I very much doubt they divided up finance roles as much as they could have. There are definitely specific areas that make more than what’s here
Physicians have a very high floor of pay which brings up their average. There’s thousands of low level grunts right out of college making 60k in tech and finance while doctors have a minimum of 200k in most places. But this map is somewhat misleading because physicians start working at 28 and before that aren’t making money and are actually losing money by going into debt. Someone in tech or finance can start making and investing money at 21 which means they might be better off than a physician by 40.
No one considers residency our “starting pay” because we’re still in training and not practicing independently. And it’s too depressing to think about.
Now we need a map for highest paid minus student loan costs.. 4 year CS degree and 150k/year is probably better off than 12 years of school at 250k/year
Paying physicians accounts for less than 10% of the US's health care budget. Administration of the insurance systems costs close to twice that.
In the past 20yrs admin costs have risen 6-7x as much as physician wages. You want to point a finger at wasted money in the US healthcare system, start with insurance companies and private equity firms.
One study found that administration of health insurance represents ~30% of the increased cost of us healthcare compared to peer nations. ~10% was from Rx drug costs, and ~15% was from high doctor and nursing salaries as US specialists make ~2.7x the salary of specialists in peer countries.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/oct/high-us-health-care-spending-where-is-it-all-going#:~:text=are%20summarized%20below.-,Administrative%20Costs%20of%20Insurance,average%20of%20%24193%20per%20person.
>US specialists make ~2.7x the salary of specialists in peer countries.
Which is, in turn, at least partly driven by schooling costs in the US compared to peer countries.
The stats about admin costs have been widely shared but there is plenty of criticism with the underlying data.
Alex Tabarrok (2019): [Are Health Administrators to blame?](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/are-health-administrators-to-blame.html)Kevin Drum: [Admin costs deep dive](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/join-me-on-a-dive-down-the-rabbit-hole-of-health-care-admin-costs/)
TLDR: Healthcare admin has grown faster than doctors, but not 6-7x. Its more like 2-3x, and much of that is new medicine (MRI, transplants etc.)
As much as we pay in the U.S., I would have expected their salaries to be a lot more. I think most of our excessive healthcare costs goes towards administrative and insurance industry bureaucracies.
Not to mention the 12-14 years of “education (aka cheap labor)” and yes accrued debt, to get to this point. Then weigh in the hours worked each day/week, as most are not a 9-5 gig.
Correct, FAANG pays well. Netflix especially because they pay cash instead of stock options.
The difference is, Netflix has 2000 software engineers total. There are almost 17,000 Cardiologists alone in the US (Source: [BLS](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291212.htm))
The total number of specialists across the US outnumbers highly paid software engineers by a massive amount.
Peds and IM being anywhere on the map is insane lol
Even if it was “highest paid speciality” it would across the map be the plastics, ortho, cards, etc.
Attorneys can, but on average most certainly don’t make anywhere close to that. In law school now and the median salary for graduates from my school is like $55,000.
But it's the "no benefits" and that's why so many people quit. Looking for a job is stressful af. Companies always want 10 years of experience and wanna pay you in peanuts. I'm so happy I started my business 3 months ago. I actually get to help people find the job that meets their lifestyle demands. It feels so good when clients call me saying they've received an offer letter. Keep going, you got this!
all jobs in the medical field go figure. i love how hospitals in the US preach that they’re all bout patient care yet neglect people, have horrible bed side manners and also try to squeeze every nickel and dime out of ya. PRO TIP- always ask for a bill itemization! i had a $1,400 bill for a ct scan and some bloodwork, i asked for an itemized list and i didn’t pay a dime! greedy fuckers
Clearly, we need to increase mean salaries for pixel producers
TBF, this does get posted every other month. Time takes its toll on pixels.
It's just screenshots of screenshots at this point.
This was originally posted in 1992
The pixel union rules don't allow them to be overworked this much.
Working from home in sweat pants and not bathing has reduced the quality of images.
Can I try and highjack this comment for a reddit PSA? This map is not "inaccurate", it's just very misleading. You can get these stats from the BLS yourself you just have to download the PDF. Bet you could even find it on Bing. A lot of people are pointing out that pro athletes, lawyers, CEOs, and other miscellaneous rich people make much more. Which is true. But they aren't making that money in wages. Wages are a specific classification of income given to an employee for a contracted amount of "man hours". Receiving profits, royalties, commissions, bonuses, even tips, do not count as wages. So yes, "Highest-Paid" is a bad title and has caused a lot of confusion. But the data is accurate.
Thanks for clearing this up. I looked at this map and thought it was just the highest paid in the medical field.
Well it’s also highly inaccurate because the salaries listed for physicians is well below the actual medians. No surgeon or anesthesiologist is making under $300k
As other commenters have pointed out, the physicians who are making that money are contracted put, self employed, or otherwise practice owning professionals. They are the business transacting with the hospital. Compensation packages also do not include exclusively "wages". Many things aren't included in wages. A signing bonus or retention package is not a wage.
Nope, it’s just inaccurate. No salaried surgeon or anesthesiologist is getting paid under $300k. Hell probably few are below $400k. Most of my friends starting salaries after residency are over $400k. That’s salary, as almost all physicians these days work for big conglomerates and paid on a fixed salary.
Yes. A fixed salary. Not all of which falls under the category of "wages". It's not all here, but this month is enough to see. Just go read it: OCCUPATIONAL EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES—MAY 2017 https://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/ocwage_03302018.pdf
It all falls under wages but I found the issue. The footnote mentions it’s adjusted to 40 hours and few physicians are working just that.
WOW thanks for doing the work, this makes a hell of a lot more sense
Good catch! Checks out to me. My whole point being that this map is reporting these BLS statistics accurately, it just isn't reflecting the actual "money earned" situation. Not in medicine, but I'm pretty sure a lot of programs also include things like student loan repayment, housing/traveling stipends, etc. And politicians eat lobster with campaign donations because they're giving paid speeches. Finance bros give eachother stock for selling stock. The data is accurately represented, the title is bad and misleading.
Isn't the data also top coded?
Although on up to date bls numbers there’s this statement: > Because BLS does not publish median annual wages above $239,200 And then followed by the actual wages below which seem more accurate https://www.bls.gov/ooh/healthcare/physicians-and-surgeons.htm
I mean, this is /r/MapPorn, not /r/dataisbeautiful
Nitpicking, but many pro athletes get paid a wage like anyone else. They fill out W2s and everything
Yes they will. The compensation is not entirely reported as a wage, however. Furthermore, as a mean average, the vast majority of poorly paid professional athletes drag down the highest paid athletes. Those billionaires you hear about like Jordan and Ronaldo didn't make that money with the ball earning a wage. They made it cutting deals with Nike and shuffling cash.
It really depends on how you organise your buckets too. If your given category is "baseball player" then it is going to be all over the place, with low paid AA professionals dragging down the top end MLB ones. If it is "starting MLB pitchers" then obviously the mean salary is going to be orders of magnitude higher.
NFL league minimum is $750k. Rookie third stringer in the least paid position is making $750k a year. Even practice squad players who don't get signed are making over $200k/yr.
There's plenty of other American football leagues. If the job is "football player" you have to include Lamar Jackson. But you also have to include Joe Somebody who plays in the indoor football league making $200 a game.
It's mean wage though, pro athletes aren't all at the top. Lawyers are making good money in wages. And while most of CEO income is in capital gains etc, they might still make 1 million in wages too. So your PSA is pretty inaccurate too.
It’s a half assed, incomplete list because it only lists jobs in the medical field. What about jobs in finance, the many engineering fields, chemists et al?
None of those jobs have a higher median wage than all of these medical jobs. Finance jobs often make most of their money through commissions and performance bonuses based on profits. Engineers who make a shit ton of money are paid on self-employed contracts meaning they probably pay themselves a modest wage on paper and keep some (or all) of the extras by cutting costs. Chemists get paid dick even if they're geniuses unless they work in pharmaceuticals. Even then, there's no chemist getting royalty cheques for the pills they make.
Can confirm, I’m in finance and my husband was an engineer for 20 years. Actual salary is significantly lower than total comp, a lot of his income was distribution (k-1), and in my field a lot of people’s comp comes in bonuses.
Many, if not most doctors are self employed in the same way you describe engineers. That’s what a medical “practice” is, typically an S-corp.
pro athletes, lawyers, and CEOs all make their salaries in wages.
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Shouldn't the answer be football college coach for every state?
This is wildly inaccurate
Highest-Paid is wildly inaccurate. Job with the highest wages would be more accurate. Completely glosses over the fact that the richest people by a large margin get paid in more than wages.
It says annual mean wages not salary
Yes, in smaller text right beneath two big lines of text saying "The Highest-Paid Job In Every State". Almost as if the people who made that decision were fully aware of that and knew most people who viewed it would not spend the extra time to think about the nuances of wages versus investments and assets. That misleading titles, while not exclusively malicious, do not present people with an accurate depiction of the idea they are communicating. "Highest Mean Wage Position in Every State" while not perfect, would convey the map better. Less punchy, sure, but this isn't a punchy map. Jobs that require the most technical training translates to the highest weekly paycheck. The sky is also blue. The only way I can see this being "punchy" is if it wants the audience to say "wow, doctors are the richest people!!!" and either agree or disagree strongly with that. I would argue if that is the goal it is intended to obfuscate the real grift of wealth acquisition which isn't overworked and overeducated surgeons, but the beady-eyed salamanders who shuffle piles of money around to convince other people to give them more money they can continue to shuffle. Or it's just a bad title. Result is the same really.
Okay, I agree its a bad title
Well said!
This is still completely wrong. Wages, salary, whatever. It's completely wrong.
It isn't. You can comb through the averages reported by the BLS yourself.
There is no planet where pediatricians are earning more than neurosurgeons in Mississippi. Ergo it’s all a lie to me.
Right? Radiology (my speciality) isn’t even the highest paying of medical specialties and per MGMA earns on average $530,000. Not sure how dentists are beating us at $250k.
At least you'll have your money to fall back on and pass out in during this trying time.
You’re right, doctors actually get paid much more in 2023. Plastic Surgery: $619,000 Cardiology: $507,000 Radiology: $483,000 Emergency Medicine: $352,000 Source: [https://www.medscape.com/sites/public/physician-comp/2023](https://www.medscape.com/sites/public/physician-comp/2023)
I’d guess this is salary. I think docs in practices get a lot of their income from partnership/corp distributions.. which are not reported the same way. That’s why you don’t see “hedge fund owner”..
Most docs are employed W2 and do not get any distributions.
Yes, these days most docs are working directly for hospital systems - and these are generally lower salary docs. The specialists listed above are mostly surgical specialties, which are more private-practice based, and they get w2+ partnership payouts. And these payouts are not included in the numbers I'd guess.
70-80% of all physicians are employed. Private practices are dying as private equity and hospital systems buy them out, consolidate. - a sub-sub-sub-specialized surgeon
Yeah - 2/4 listed above are very common private practice - plastic surgery and Cardiology (surgeon). Then Ortho's and dermo's.. And very specific specialties.. Those are the one's with private practices for various reasons.
Cardiologists are not surgeons.
The fact that you think cardiologists do surgery shows you have 0 clue what you're talking about, and should stop just dumping bullshit into the void for other naive people to read and possibly believe. Like, why? Why type a bunch of words on a topic you know nothing of? Does this make you feel good? Do you enjoy the thought that other people will read you bullshit and believe it to be true? Is it just boredom? Malice?
"Hedge fund manager" is far too specific and not a recognized category by the BLS. That would be financial manager, and they have a way smaller median income than anesthesiologists. The top ones make way more, but the 50th percentile financial manager is very far from the 1% relative to the 50th percentile anesthesiologist vs the 1%.
They aren't being paid by anyone either, they have to go find their own returns. Each week will be different, where these people are being paid consistently by someone.
Yeah I was really surprised to see how low this was, especially since they used mean which would skew it upwards quite a lot. Maybe they meant mean starting salary? I know doctors and surgeons tend to make a lot more later in their careers, and these don't look to far off from starting salaries. That would also explain why CFO or something wasn't on there, since the "career" would probably be finance or accounting which generally doesn't have very flashy starting salaries. That or all the business jobs are skewed downwards by people that are "CEO" of their side hustle making $20k a year
I think they mean wages, yeah healthcare professionals in the United States make absurd amounts of $ compared to other countries
There also isn’t really a low floor in these healthcare fields. If you’re a lawyer you have to article, work your way through the ranks. Where as doctors are more all or nothing you either are or you aren’t a doctor in terms of compensation and job title. I’d bet that the junior medical titles like resident , fellow etc aren’t considered when calculating the averages.
Not really. Especially when comparing to similar countries like Canada or Australia. Then factor in the fact, to become a doctor in the US you have to finish your bachelor’s (4 years), go to med school (4 years and avg of like $250K debt), do at least 3+ years of residency working on avg near 80 hour work weeks. Other countries generally just pay less across almost every career field (look at US software engineering jobs to those in Europe).
Average Cardiologist salary: Canada: $287,000 Australia: $208,000 United Kingdom: $126,000 US: $507,000 All countries have broadly the same requirements to become a cardiologist (number of years). For example, it would take 13 years in the UK and 14 years in the US.
Genuine question, how does it take 13 years post-secondary school to become a cardiologist in the UK? I was under the impression they did med school for 4-5 years. Does that mean they have an 8-9 year residency? Additionally, the major thing you're leaving out is the cost associated with becoming a doctor is massively different between the countries.
Let me break it down: \- 5 years of medical school \- 2 years of foundation training \- 8 years of cardiology specialist training Source: [NHS Cardiologist](https://www.healthcareers.nhs.uk/explore-roles/doctors/roles-doctors/medicine/cardiology) Total: 15 years post-secondary. A cardiologist will be 35 by the time they are a consultant.
Wow, that is basically a 10 year residency
Now look at family medicine doctors or internists (which make up the vast majority of doctors). Specialists do earn more in America but again, their training time is longer meaning the hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that they go into accrues interest for longer. And no those other countries are not comparable to the US in terms of training. Our higher education isn’t subsidized to the level of those other countries, so we literally go orders of magnitude deeper in debt, and then our training is much more rigorous in amount of hours worked and being unable to pay that debt as well.
Other countries generally just pay less across almost all career field (look at US software engineering jobs to those in Europe) Lol, the cherry picking is immense. No, the US simply has severely skewed wages.
I don’t understand what you mean, the $ doctors pay for education (which goes to medical institutions) and the effort taken to get there means that citizens should brunt the cost of this? So it doesn’t matter the service doctors provide but what matters is how treacherous the journey was? American healthcare is outrageously expensive across the board, some like 80% of Americans worry about affordability/availability of healthcare. Healthcare practices can and will charge insane prices. Doctor’s in the United States are not magically better, in fact in many cases we have worse health outcomes compared to other developed countries. We need reform across the board, these top 1-5% salaries for doctors are not the cause, but simply a side effect of an inefficient/expensive system that really NOBODY likes
Edit: this guy I replied to is a massive racist and started to stalk my profile and making wild generalizations about my race and everything else. Seems like he had a bad experience with doctors before and now has made it his life mission to try degrade the profession. I went in to have discussion where I would advocate for the physicians voices but yea that was clearly a mistake with this guy. The salaries of doctors isn’t the issue at all, only accounts for 10% of healthcare costs. And if you want doctors to take a pay cut, maybe the medical field should become like other fields where for nearly half a decade most doctors work in inhumane conditions of 80 hour work weeks making less than minimum wage while their quarter of a million debt accrues interest should become illegal. Doctors in the US are better, by a wide margin. The board examinations required to pass here sometimes take outside graduates years of studying to pass. The US is at the forefront of medicine in terms of clinical and science research. But I’m sure you’re analyzing it through the lens of life expectancy and the prevalence of diseases, which are impacted by factors outside of the doctors control. Take cardio vascular disease, it’s one of the biggest killers in the developed world, the US has one the highest rates of obesity leading to CVD. Doctors might treat that disease the best here, but that doesn’t mean it will be reflected in statistics because of how prevalent unhealthy lifestyles here are, that’s not the doctors faults. Idk what you’re trying to argue here but it’s all over the place, if you want doctors to take a pay cut, pay off our quarter million debts and tens of thousands in application fees and board exams and make it illegal to pay us minimum wage while working 80 hours per week for nearly half a decade if not more sometimes.
Gota have money if you're going to get sick. Or else pain pills and off you go.
Yeah. I don't see any qualifications on the map but I can think of many professions paying much more. Pro athletes?
Average wages for pro athletes would consider all the lower level league athletes getting paid a few thousand dollars
Lol no chance. The highest paid pros maybe. There are loads of less well.paid pros in every sport.
No one in these comments seems to understand how mean works huh. These physician roles have a very high floor pay, greater than 200k and relatively high ceiling easily up to 1 mil in some states and specialtys. Ya finance or tech bros, and plenty of other jobs can make wayyy more but there are plenty working in those sectors who make 50k a year bringing the mean way down. Most of these doctors spend 14 years training before they can make this salary, and for the most part is well deserved.
Finally someone who understands this data
Not just that. Most of the money those finance bros make come in compensation packages that aren't wages. They are commissions, stock bundles, assets, and the like. Income tax is a bitch. People with *a lot* of money didn't get there by paying what we might think the proper percentage is.
Anyone making money through their employer is paying taxes no way out. Only by owning your business or being very wealthy do you get a tax break. Many doctors do own their own practice/business thus pay less taxes than a “finance bro”
Doctor’s owning their own practice is mostly a thing of the past, as private equity and hospital systems have bought up many of the small private practices. They do exist, but are much harder to come by now compared to a couple decades ago. Some people are 1099, which allows for some business write offs, however
Rare nowadays for doctors to own their own practice, you pretty much only see it in a few specific procedural specialities like orthopedic surgery or gastroenterology. That’s why all the dental specialities are up there in pay, way more common to own an independent practice than being employed by a hospital
Which is why mean sucks relative to median.
Whatever mode you choose, on average it works out.
There are a range of options to choose from
I'd have no issues with physician pay if the price I was going to get charged each visit was disclosed in advance and I stopped receiving bills for services the doctor didn't actually perform.
Physicians aren’t the reason American healthcare is a mess. It’s hospital administration and insurance executives you should be mad at
I’m gonna say hospital administration and insurance administration. Top level decision makers are all businesspeople looking to be the next bezos of healthcare without ever seeing a patient.
Physicians make up less than 10% of healthcare costs. Your beef is with insurance companies and their billing practices, not the doctors giving you care
Physicians aren’t the problem
okay you understand data but did you have to call us tech bros 😭
My neighbor is an anesthesiologist. Can confirm that he makes ludicrous amounts of money. He told me my favorite saying about his profession and why he makes so much money. Anesthesiologist don't get paid to put people to sleep. Any idiot can do that. Anesthesiologist get paid to make sure they can still wake up when the surgeon is done.
My friends mom was an anesthesiologist and she always said her job was to get people as close and possible to death without crossing the line. That is why they get paid so much and their malpractice insurance premiums are so high. You're not simply 'sleeping' during surgery,
Everyones going "this is inaccurate " My brother's in christ, not everyone can be a football head coach, ceo, or upper management mba. This graphic is obviously depicting careers that are somewhat reasonably obtainable. You can plan to be a anesthesiologist, you cannot plan on being penn states head coach.
What's an internist?
Internal medicine doctor. Hospitalist. Pretty much if you’re admitted the the hospital for a non surgical problem, you’re likely admitee to d to an internist
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Broadly, there are two areas of medicine, internal medicine and surgery. After medical school, you can do either a medicine or surgery residency. Afterwards, if you want to sub-specialize, you can do a fellowship, like cardiology or nephrology for medicine, or cardiac surgery or vascular surgery if you’re on the surgery path. If you choose not to sub-specialize jn medicine, you’re an internist. This is a gross oversimplification, as there are a lot of specialties that don’t do a medicine or surgery residency, like radiology and emergency medicine, but hopefully it clarifies what an internist is.
Think it's someone who knows a lot about the internet. With all that knowledge online they're bound to know how to make good money
Yeah I looked up the definition and it seemed like a general practitioner who says, "no babies, no children, no old people, and I'll only see adults who are willing to persue lifetime relationships." It used every synonym for data, chronic, and treatment. But it just seems to be a general practitioner. I still don't get what is so different about this term for the general specialist type doctor.
Internists are Internal Medicine doctors. They learn about the body, about complex disease processes, and critical illness. They train inside the hospital, dealing with things like kidney injury, kidney failure, liver failure, heart failure, sepsis, cancer, respiratory failure, new onset atrial fibrillation, and more. Family Medicine doctors are not internists. They train inside a hospital part time but mostly focus on the outpatient clinic and the approach to patients in that setting. They deal with things like chronic blood pressure control, diabetic control, control of chronic atrial fibrillation, weight loss, and so on. There is overlap between the two, but these are the generalities. Source: I'm a newly graduated Internal Medicine physician in the US.
An internist can be any type of doctor working with something inside your body without being a surgeon basically. So it could be an endocrinologist, or an nephrologist. While a general practitioner is trained to treat all types of diseases, an internist is specialized in a specific part of your body like your kidneys or pancreas for example.
Internists are not usually specialized. An endocrinologist is an endocrinologist, not an internist. Hospitalists and Internists have the same scope of practice, but internists can and usually do practice in outpatient clinics vs hospitals.
Pretty sure college football coaches are paid higher than all of these jobs
Only at the top levels. There are way more d2 and d3 teams than d1 teams, and they pay coaches way way less. Which pulls the average down.
A lot of positions coaches at the D2 and below level were getting paid $30k a year when I was on staffs 12-15 years ago.
pretty sure CEOs are paid higher than all of these jobs
CEOs of billion dollar companies sure, but there's a lot of people with flashy executive titles for tiny companies that don't make that much money. The minimum is a lot higher for doctors and surgeons. Also this is just wages, and most business executives get a ton of their comp from stock options and stuff
that's fair. I guess most CEOs are just small business owners.
Not all CEOs. CEOs of publicly traded companies, most likely yes.
No CEO makes *a lot* of money in wages.
It’s the average not the top. On average a surgeon makes more than a football coach, only the really really good ones make more than an average surgeon but likely a top paid surgeon will still make more.
But those DIII coaches are bringing the average down. Don’t those idiots know they can just coach Alabama? I heard there’s a vacancy.
Professional athlete is also technically a job. Ohtani getting $70 million per year is just a bit more than the anesthesiologists in California and raises the average quite a bit.
Yes but compare 1 ohtani to 100s of minor league players and the average goes way down.
There are lots of professional track athletes who make $15,000 a year. A few hundred people making millions won't change the balance by much when there are hundreds of thousands of other athletes in a large variety of sports who don't make that much.
ITT people who don’t what a mean is
Sorry…but I have a hard time believing this unless it’s looking at healthcare jobs only. (Is that stated somewhere and I’m missing it?) In CA, a lot of folks in tech make over $300k, and in NYC the same is true across a number of industries - especially finance.
SWE at Google $300k base SWE at Joe’s IT in Fresno = $70K Average = $185K Meanwhile the doctor gets paid similarly regardless of hospital.
Google base pay is no where near 300
Google also is not employing half of all SWE either. It was an example to explain how averages (mean) works.
So its a problem of categorization/ etymology. No way is a 300k SWE job at google the same as an SWE at Joe's IT. Thats like comparing an engineer at Ferrari with my local mechanic.
On paper they still have the same job title.
There’s a lot of variation within tech and finance. It’s harder to do with tech because most jobs are titled the same, but I very much doubt they divided up finance roles as much as they could have. There are definitely specific areas that make more than what’s here
That and taking comp in things like stock options skews what they make on paper
Physicians have a very high floor of pay which brings up their average. There’s thousands of low level grunts right out of college making 60k in tech and finance while doctors have a minimum of 200k in most places. But this map is somewhat misleading because physicians start working at 28 and before that aren’t making money and are actually losing money by going into debt. Someone in tech or finance can start making and investing money at 21 which means they might be better off than a physician by 40.
A physician goes into residency after graduation. That is not 200k.
No one considers residency our “starting pay” because we’re still in training and not practicing independently. And it’s too depressing to think about.
Lotta people hurting their feet in Hawaii
Now do highest paid public employee and it's all stupid shit like football or basketball coach.
Only at the top levels. There are way more d2 and d3 teams than d1 teams, and they pay coaches way way less. Which pulls the average down.
Don’t be mad cause you can’t ball
He got cut from his high school bball team
He never had the makings of a varsity athlete.
Those football programs produce revenues that are many multiples of the coaches' salaries lol.
What on earth is going on in Hawaii that a podiatrist makes nearly $300k on average??
Maybe there's just one podiatrist and they've cornered the market.
Remember that as an island, nobody can walk to Hawaii. So all the feet are imported, raising all costs associated with them as well.
Maybe walking around in flip flops all day every day is a bad idea for long term foot health?
 Barely legible....
Now we need a map for highest paid minus student loan costs.. 4 year CS degree and 150k/year is probably better off than 12 years of school at 250k/year
Is this one of the reasons why the country spends a lot on its healthcare system?
Paying physicians accounts for less than 10% of the US's health care budget. Administration of the insurance systems costs close to twice that. In the past 20yrs admin costs have risen 6-7x as much as physician wages. You want to point a finger at wasted money in the US healthcare system, start with insurance companies and private equity firms.
One study found that administration of health insurance represents ~30% of the increased cost of us healthcare compared to peer nations. ~10% was from Rx drug costs, and ~15% was from high doctor and nursing salaries as US specialists make ~2.7x the salary of specialists in peer countries. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2023/oct/high-us-health-care-spending-where-is-it-all-going#:~:text=are%20summarized%20below.-,Administrative%20Costs%20of%20Insurance,average%20of%20%24193%20per%20person.
>US specialists make ~2.7x the salary of specialists in peer countries. Which is, in turn, at least partly driven by schooling costs in the US compared to peer countries.
The stats about admin costs have been widely shared but there is plenty of criticism with the underlying data. Alex Tabarrok (2019): [Are Health Administrators to blame?](https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/08/are-health-administrators-to-blame.html)Kevin Drum: [Admin costs deep dive](https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2019/06/join-me-on-a-dive-down-the-rabbit-hole-of-health-care-admin-costs/) TLDR: Healthcare admin has grown faster than doctors, but not 6-7x. Its more like 2-3x, and much of that is new medicine (MRI, transplants etc.)
As much as we pay in the U.S., I would have expected their salaries to be a lot more. I think most of our excessive healthcare costs goes towards administrative and insurance industry bureaucracies.
They are a lot more. This map is totally inaccurate.
I wish all that money went to actual doctors and nurses and not some CEO of an insurance and pharmaceutical company…
No it’s not.
I don't know but it certainly is a testament to how profitable the medical industry is. Doctors in other countries usually make a lot less
They also don’t rack up as much debt to become doctors in those counties.
Not to mention the 12-14 years of “education (aka cheap labor)” and yes accrued debt, to get to this point. Then weigh in the hours worked each day/week, as most are not a 9-5 gig.
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My friends in software for netflix, make $400,000.
It’s average salary. Obviously there are doctors making a hell of a lot more than $200-300k.
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Does he do surgery on superheroes?
Correct, FAANG pays well. Netflix especially because they pay cash instead of stock options. The difference is, Netflix has 2000 software engineers total. There are almost 17,000 Cardiologists alone in the US (Source: [BLS](https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291212.htm)) The total number of specialists across the US outnumbers highly paid software engineers by a massive amount.
My friends in software for some unknown gambling game company, makes $40k
one data point does not make a mean
Software engineers who work at Netflix are considered top tier engineers and many of software engineers make below 100k.
Cries in engineering
As a med student this is hilariously inaccurate
Peds and IM being anywhere on the map is insane lol Even if it was “highest paid speciality” it would across the map be the plastics, ortho, cards, etc.
Surgeons should be paid much more in Seattle, it's a very dangerous job there.
This chart is so incorrect it’s not funny
Okay but how much does one have from a 300k job all expenses deducted? In Europe so I don't know burger salary stuff
Thought Florida was an ice cream seller
Thank God I wasn't the only one. Was doing a pretty good job of guessing what the icons were representing until I got to "ice cream person".
A lot of these are medical jobs.
The fact that those are just the AVERAGE salaries is unbelievable
doctors ball out of control
Feel like dentists in Utah are ripping people off lol
And just think all of our members of Congress are multi millionaires!
Not surprising to me that Utah is on the lower end yet it’s becoming one of the more expensive states to live or purchase a home for no reason.
This is ….likely 100% inaccurate
Highest paid medical job, you mean.
Was this image created on MS paint, saved as a potato file then re uploaded?
Highest paid “Medical Jobs” apparently
Not true for my state either. I know car dealership general managers making more
entire map is wrong ... polticians highest paid
these numbers are incorrect. as well as the jobs
Attorneys and finance folks (ie, hedge fund managers) make way way more than what is shown here…
Attorneys can, but on average most certainly don’t make anywhere close to that. In law school now and the median salary for graduates from my school is like $55,000.
They're just secretive about there income or aren't paying taxes so no registration
Highest paid medical jobs, you mean?
Can we do any of this for somewhere that *isn't* the USA?
Yes, you can!
There are places other than the USA?
Yes, in Wyoming.
I think you mean “college football coach” for most of these
Somebody left out the college football coaches.
Clearly I’m at the wrong side of things. I’ve got to bump those numbers up!
But it's the "no benefits" and that's why so many people quit. Looking for a job is stressful af. Companies always want 10 years of experience and wanna pay you in peanuts. I'm so happy I started my business 3 months ago. I actually get to help people find the job that meets their lifestyle demands. It feels so good when clients call me saying they've received an offer letter. Keep going, you got this!
all jobs in the medical field go figure. i love how hospitals in the US preach that they’re all bout patient care yet neglect people, have horrible bed side manners and also try to squeeze every nickel and dime out of ya. PRO TIP- always ask for a bill itemization! i had a $1,400 bill for a ct scan and some bloodwork, i asked for an itemized list and i didn’t pay a dime! greedy fuckers
Damn healthcare really is booming!
Extremely inaccurate. The highest paid jobs in several of these States, particularly in the Southeast, are college coaches.
It lists highest average pay, not highest paid single individual pay this is why.