Occupation / job
Podiatrists
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 $160,300 midpoint is $9,190 a month above the $50,020 typical American job, which puts Podiatrists near the ceiling of published federal wage data. Everything at this level is gated, and the gate is usually years long.
Employment as Podiatrists is 9,680 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.
No verified preparation time is on file for Podiatrists. 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.
Who should not do this
At 2.2x, from $103,730 to $225,910, the two halves of Podiatrists are not really doing the same job. $10,181 a month separates them, and something other than the title explains it.
The bottom quarter of this field earns $103,730 — $49.87 an hour, $53,710 above the $50,020 national midpoint. When even the worst-paid quarter of Podiatrists is this far ahead, the barrier to entry is doing the work of keeping it there.
Avoid it if you cannot do nights, cannot carry medico-legal exposure, or need to be finished thinking about work when the shift ends.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 9,680 figure counts people already working as Podiatrists, 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 $103,730 to $225,910 at 2.2x: 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 Podiatrists.
The middle half of this field earns between $103,730 and $225,910. That is $122,180 of range, with $160,300 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
Getting to $225,910, the 75th percentile, is worth $65,610 a year more than the $160,300 midpoint and $122,180 more than the $103,730 a quarter of Podiatrists settle for.
From $160,300 it is $56,570 down to the bottom quarter and $65,610 up to the top. The upper half of the range is the longer one, which is the ordinary shape for work where experience compounds.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $49.87 at the bottom quarter, $77.06 at the midpoint, $108.61 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
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Podiatrists for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $160,300 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $160,300 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Podiatrists, 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