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    • How much do doctors earn? Why it’s the highest paying job in America.
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    How much do doctors earn? Why it’s the highest paying job in America.

    Pabio Posted on

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    Question: What are the 20 highest paying jobs in America?

    Answer: Doctor.

    This is more or less true: of the 20 American occupations with the highest average salaryaccording to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 16 are some sort of doctor.

    Pediatric surgeons earn an average of $449,320 per year as of 2023, according to federal data. Cardiologists earn $423,250. Orthopedic surgeons receive $378,250.

    Only four of the twenty highest paid professions are not doctors. They are dentists. (And orthodontists, dentists and specialists.)

    Physicians earn more than any other major category of workers, according to federal data: more than engineers. More than computer scientists. More even than lawyers.

    To find a higher-paid group than doctors, economists say, one must explore elite subcategories, such as corporate CEOs and legal partners. The average partner of a large company earns more than a million dollars per year. The typical S&P 500 CEO raised $16.3 million in 2023, according to the Associated Press.

    American doctors are so visibly well paid that a group of economic researchers spent years trying to understand why.

    Here’s what they found.

    Lots of school, lots of hours

    As any medical school applicant knows, it takes a very long time to study to become a doctor: college, then medical school, and post-graduate residency years.

    And the hours are long. A doctor’s typical work week ranges from more than 40 hours to 60 hours or more, the researchers found, depending on the specialty.

    “The job requires a lot of training and long working hours, which is naturally associated with higher income,” said Joshua Gottlieba University of Chicago economist involved in the research.

    Gottlieb and his colleagues found that within the medical profession, doctors tend to earn more in specialties that require more training and longer work hours. Each additional year of training, for example, translates to $143,000 in additional annual income.

    But education and work hours don’t tell the whole story. Farmers and ranchers work long hoursshows an old federal report, and they don’t earn a doctor’s salary.

    As for training: Many of Gottlieb’s academic colleagues spend as many years in school as doctors. And most teachers win less than $100,000 per year.

    “My brother is an emergency room doctor and I’ve been in school longer than him,” said Teresa Ghilarduccichair of economics at the New School for Social Research in New York. She did not participate in Gottlieb’s study.

    Doctors like money

    Gottlieb and his colleagues were criticized by doctors for saying this, but their research found that doctors are looking for better-paying jobs.

    The average doctor earned $350,000 in 2017, researchers said in a report. Working document 2023which is awaiting publication in the Quarterly Journal of Economics. The top 1% of doctors earned more than $1.7 million a year.

    Researchers have found that doctors at top medical schools gravitate toward higher-paying specialties. Doctors also favor procedures that yield more profit.

    Some medical specialties are incredibly well paid. Here are some of the top salaries of 2017 for doctors in their peak earning years, ages 40 to 55, according to Gottlieb and his peers:

    • Neurosurgery: $920,500
    • Orthopedic surgery: $788,600
    • Dermatology: $655,200
    • Heart surgery: $607,300
    • Ophthalmology: $597,000

    “We see people attracted to specialties where salaries are increasing,” Gottlieb said, just like salary-conscious workers in any field. “I think it’s the human way.”

    Maria Polyakovaassociate professor at Stanford Medical School, joined Gottlieb in the research. She notes that medical school graduates tend to be exceptional students with many career options.

    “For the most part, these are the best students in the country who could have pursued other opportunities that paid just as well,” she said.

    The American Medical Association noted, in a statement to USA TODAY, that doctors often spend 12 to 15 years in training, typically leaving medical school with more than $200,000 in debt. High wages help them get out of debt and make up for missed years of work.

    There are not enough doctors

    The United States has less doctors per capita than most other developed countries, according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development: 2.7 per 1,000 potential patients, in 2021, compared to 3.4 in France and 4.5 in Germany.

    A major reason, researchers say, is that the medical industry and the federal government control the number of seats in U.S. medical schools and the number of residencies in hospitals.

    The shortage stems from a time when health care leaders thought we had too many doctorsleading to caps on medical school enrollments and residencies. Ironically, the same groups are now warning of a shortage of doctors.

    The medical association says its change in position reflects changes in the industry, noting that the current group of doctors is aging and facing challenges. burnout.

    “We kind of have an artificially limited number of doctors,” said Andrew Biggssenior fellow at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute who was not involved in Gottlieb’s research. “It’s what economists call a barrier to entry,” he said, and it drives up doctors’ salaries.

    The American Medical Association “acts like a doctors’ union” by limiting their numbers, Biggs said. “The goal is to keep wages high.”

    The government sets the prices

    One of the fundamental reasons doctors make a lot of money, researchers say, is because medical care is expensive. And it is the federal government that largely sets these prices.

    Medicare, the federal insurance program, sets prices for medical services. Prices are high enough for health spending to represent at least 17% of the country’s gross domestic product.

    “The government has decided, the policy has decided to devote a very significant portion of society’s resources to health care,” Gottlieb said.

    Customers – patients – don’t have much say in the cost of their medical care.

    “It’s not like you’re going to compare surgeon prices,” Biggs said.

    According to economists, this configuration makes the health sector almost unique among American industries.

    “In a way, the medical industry is like a defense contractor,” Ghilarducci said. “Their main customer, the federal government, has deep pockets. »

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