Occupation / job
Neurologists
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
At $248,560 — $198,540 a year clear of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — Neurologists sits at the top of what BLS publishes. Read the gate before the figure: at this level there is always one, and it is usually measured in years.
Employment as Neurologists is 10,590 nationally. At that size a large city holds a working market and a small one holds almost none, so where you live changes the number of employers available to you by an order of magnitude.
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.
We carry no verified training length for Neurologists — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter earn under $155,990, a quarter over $357,990: $16,833 a month between them at a 2.3x ratio. Planning around the midpoint of a spread this wide is planning around a number very few people in Neurologists actually earn.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $155,990 — $74.99 an hour, $105,970 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Neurologists is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
Avoid it if you could not carry clinical responsibility for an outcome that goes badly through nobody’s fault.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 10,590 figure counts people already working as Neurologists, 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
From $155,990 to $357,990 at 2.3x: something inside this occupation sorts people a long way apart. Identifying what it is — sector, employer, credential — is worth more than any general advice about Neurologists.
Put in money rather than ratios: $155,990 at the 25th percentile, $248,560 at the midpoint, $357,990 at the 75th. $202,000 separates the quarter of Neurologists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $155,990 and $357,990 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $248,560. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $109,430; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $202,000.
The climb from $248,560 to $357,990 is $109,430; the drop to $155,990 is $92,570. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Neurologists and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $74.99 at the bottom quarter, $119.50 at the midpoint, $172.11 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $248,560 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $248,560 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Neurologists, 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