Occupation / job
Emergency Medicine Physicians
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
The $335,550 midpoint is $23,794 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Emergency Medicine Physicians near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
With 32,880 employed as Emergency Medicine Physicians, most metros have a working market: several employers, visible turnover, and the ability to change jobs without moving house.
These roles suit people who want responsibility for the whole of a patient’s problem rather than a part of it, and who can carry that home without it consuming them.
We carry no verified training length for Emergency Medicine Physicians — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The gap between the bottom quarter of Emergency Medicine Physicians at $184,830 and the top quarter at $418,890 is $234,060 — a ratio of 2.3x. Wide enough that the headline median describes almost nobody, and treating it as your number is a planning error.
Even at the 25th percentile Emergency Medicine Physicians pays $184,830, $134,810 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Almost the entire distribution sits above the typical American wage, which is rare and worth weighing against the entry cost.
Avoid it if the length and cost of the training would be unbearable if you changed your mind halfway.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 32,880 figure counts people already working as Emergency Medicine Physicians, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
At 2.3x the range from $184,830 to $418,890 is doing more explaining than the job title is. Something sorts people across that distance — sector, speciality, or who employs them — and finding out what it is matters more than the $335,550 midpoint.
Put in money rather than ratios: $184,830 at the 25th percentile, $335,550 at the midpoint, $418,890 at the 75th. $234,060 separates the quarter of Emergency Medicine Physicians at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $184,830 and $418,890 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $335,550. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $83,340; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $234,060.
Getting from $184,830 to the $335,550 midpoint is $150,720; getting from there to $418,890 is only $83,340. The hard part of the range is the lower half, which is also the half a newcomer starts in.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Emergency Medicine Physicians is $161.32 an hour. The quarters sit at $88.86 and $201.38, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Emergency Medicine Physicians. The self-employed are excluded, so $335,550 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $335,550 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Emergency Medicine Physicians, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else