Occupation / job
Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric
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 $358,550 — $308,530 a year clear of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric 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 Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric is 14,100 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.
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 Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
The middle half of Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric spans $180,610 to $530,700, which is 2.9x and $29,174 a month. Ask what puts someone at the top of a range like this before assuming time served does it, because usually it does not.
The 25th percentile is $180,610, $130,590 above the $50,020 typical American job. When even the floor is this high, the thing to investigate is the entry requirement rather than the pay.
Avoid it if you could not carry clinical responsibility for an outcome that goes badly through nobody’s fault.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 14,100 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 2.9x ratio between $180,610 and $530,700 means this label covers several distinct jobs. Treat $358,550 as arithmetic about a mixed population rather than as a description of any of them.
The middle half of this field earns between $180,610 and $530,700. That is $350,090 of range, with $358,550 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $530,700, the 75th percentile, is worth $172,150 a year more than the $358,550 midpoint and $350,090 more than the $180,610 a quarter of Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric settle for.
$177,940 down to $180,610, $172,150 up to $530,700: the midpoint of Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric is centred in its own middle half. That symmetry is why the median and the average would say much the same thing here, which is not true of most pages on this site.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $86.83 at the bottom quarter, $172.37 at the midpoint, $255.14 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
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric. The self-employed are excluded, so $358,550 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
The hourly number on this page is $358,550 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric, 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