Cardiologists

$496,010 puts Cardiologists among the highest medians BLS publishes, roughly 892% above the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint. Pay at this level always has a gate in front of it: a residency, a bar exam, a clearance, or a decade.

Nationally 17,290 people do this. That is a real occupation with a thin local presence — enough that Cardiologists is a career, not enough that you can assume a second employer down the road.

Clinical practice suits people who can decide under uncertainty with a patient in front of them, and who are steady about the documentation, the shifts and the liability that come attached.

No verified preparation time is on file for Cardiologists. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.

At 2.2x, from $274,280 to $610,060, the two halves of Cardiologists are not really doing the same job. $27,981 a month separates them, and something other than the title explains it.

The bottom quarter of this field earns $274,280 — $131.86 an hour, $224,260 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Cardiologists is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.

Avoid it if the length and cost of the training would be unbearable if you changed your mind halfway.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 17,290 people employed as Cardiologists; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.

A 2.2x ratio says the label covers materially different work. Somewhere between $274,280 and $610,060, employer type, sub-speciality or credential is doing the sorting that the job title is not.

In cash terms the middle half of Cardiologists runs $274,280 to $610,060 — $335,780 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $496,010.

Between $274,280 and $610,060 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $496,010. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $114,050; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $335,780.

The midpoint sits high inside its own range: $221,730 above the $274,280 bottom quarter but only $114,050 below the $610,060 top quarter. Most of the distance in Cardiologists is spent climbing out of the bottom, and once you are past the middle there is not much further to go.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $131.86 at the bottom quarter, $238.46 at the midpoint, $293.29 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.