Orthopedic Surgeon Salary Calculator

1. Choose annual salary or hourly rate, the way your contract states base pay.
2. Enter your base pay, your hours per week and your weeks per year. Add other annual pay or a second offer if you have them.
3. Read your annual gross pay, the pay-period amounts and where your hourly pay sits in the BLS wage table.

What each result tells you:

The first preset is an example, not a typical wage. It shows a surgeon on a $450,000 salary who works 50 hours a week for 48 weeks. That is $187.50 an hour, about the 55th percentile. The same salary sits at about the 63rd percentile of annual wages.

An orthopedic surgeon salary is the gross pay an employed orthopedic surgeon earns in a year, before tax and deductions. BLS counts it under occupation code 29-1242, Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric.

BLS describes the work this way: orthopedic surgeons diagnose and treat conditions of or injuries to the musculoskeletal system, which includes bones, muscles, ligaments and tendons. Some focus on one area of the body, such as the foot and ankle, or on one type of practice, such as sports medicine.

These facts come from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook and the OEWS wage survey, read on 2026-10-02.

Who the Wage Table Leaves Out

The BLS wage survey covers employees only. It does not cover self-employed surgeons or owners and partners of unincorporated practices. A partner who takes a share of practice profit is not in the table. That is one reason the 15,500 job count is larger than the 14,100 in the wage survey.

This tool is for employed surgeons, fellows and residents who are checking a contract. It is not a pay quote from any employer.

The calculator converts your pay between time periods, then places your hourly pay in the BLS wage distribution for orthopedic surgeons.

1. Convert. An hourly rate is multiplied by hours and weeks. A salary is divided by them to get pay per hour.
2. Add other pay. Overtime, differentials and bonuses you typed are added to the annual total only.
3. Find the band. Your base hourly pay is checked against the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile wages. Your annual base pay gets the same check against annual wages.
4. Interpolate. W1 and W2 are the two BLS wages around your pay. P1 and P2 are their percentiles.
5. Measure the gap. Your hourly pay minus the median, then divided by the median.

The table below is the full BLS wage table for orthopedic surgeons that the tool uses.

Source: BLS OEWS, national estimates, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

BLS annual wages equal the hourly wage times 2,080 hours. That is 40 hours for 52 weeks. The comparison uses hourly pay so that part-time and long-shift schedules are judged fairly.

An orthopedic surgeon in a hospital group earns $520,000, production pay included. She works about 55 hours a week for 48 weeks. A call stipend and a retention bonus add $40,000 a year. A second group offers $600,000 for the same workload.

Her salary looks strong against annual wages, at about the 73rd percentile. Per hour the picture is more modest. She works 2,640 hours a year, 560 more than the 2,080 behind BLS annual wages. Her $196.97 an hour sits at about the 57th percentile. On a 40-hour, 52-week year the same salary is $250.00 an hour, about the 73rd.

Hours and Call

Hours set the real rate of a salaried surgeon. A $520,000 salary is $250.00 an hour at 2,080 hours and $196.97 at 2,640 hours. Enter the hours you work, call time in the hospital included.

Industry

Offices of physicians employ 10,290 of the 14,100 surgeons in the survey, or 73.0%. BLS lists only three industries by employment for this small occupation.

The industries with the highest employment of orthopedic surgeons that BLS lists. Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

Mean wages differ by industry. General hospitals pay a mean of $442,340, which is $76,590 above offices of physicians.

The five industries with the highest annual mean wage for orthopedic surgeons. Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

BLS shows the outpatient care center mean only as equal to or greater than $239,200 a year. This page prints that limit and adds no number.

State

BLS gives no usable state ranking for orthopedic surgeons. Its list of highest-paying states holds seven states, and every mean is shown only as at or above $239,200: Alaska, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Utah and Vermont. The order is alphabetical, not a ranking. New York has the most jobs, with 1,450.

Sample Size

Orthopedic surgery is a small occupation in the survey. The employment estimate has a 10.9% relative standard error and the mean wage 3.6%. Treat a small gap to the median with care.

The Wide Spread

The 10th percentile is $84,170 and the 90th is $659,290. BLS does not say which jobs make up the low end, and this page does not guess.

Orthopedic surgeons rank sixth among the 17 physician occupations that BLS lists by median wage. All figures are May 2025 medians from the Occupational Outlook Handbook, read on 2026-10-02.

The orthopedic surgeon median is 1.30 times the median for all physicians and surgeons. The mean of $373,570 sits $15,020 above the median, because the top of the range stretches far.

Reading an Employed Contract

Enter the salary and the weekly hours the group expects. The hourly figure shows what the contract pays for your time.

Comparing Two Offers

Enter one offer as base pay and the other as the second offer. The tool shows both percentiles and the yearly difference.

Pricing an Hourly Contract

Choose hourly, then set your weeks. A $200 rate for 40 hours and 46 weeks pays $368,000.00 a year. The salary to hourly calculator does the same conversion without the BLS comparison.

Planning After Training

A surgeon who is finishing residency can set a first salary against a loan balance with the student loan payoff calculator.

Leaving Employment for Practice Ownership

Owner income is not a wage. Read the BLS table as an employee benchmark, then estimate the tax on practice profit with the self-employment tax calculator.

1. Comparing Partner Income with Employee Wages

Practice profit paid to an owner is not in the survey. A partner who compares against this table compares unlike things.

2. Reading a Salary Without the Hours

A $520,000 salary is about the 73rd percentile per hour at 2,080 hours and about the 57th at 2,640 hours.

3. Quoting $239,200 as a Wage

That figure is a reporting limit. Earlier BLS releases printed many physician wages only as equal to or greater than it. The May 2025 table prints all five percentiles for orthopedic surgeons as dollar figures.

4. Expecting a Subspecialty Figure

BLS publishes one wage table for all orthopedic surgeons. It has no spine, joint replacement or sports medicine table, and this tool does not invent one.

5. Leaving Production Pay Out of Base Pay

BLS wages include incentive pay and production bonuses. Enter them in base pay. Keep one-time bonuses in the other annual pay field.

6. Treating Gross Pay as Take-Home Pay

Every figure here is before tax. The gross vs net income guide explains the difference.

The conversion is exact arithmetic. The percentile is an estimate, because BLS publishes only five points of the wage distribution.

BLS wages are straight-time gross pay. They exclude overtime pay, shift differentials and nonproduction bonuses. Keep those in the other annual pay field so the comparison stays like for like.

Employed orthopedic surgeons had a median annual wage of $358,550 in May 2025, according to BLS. The mean was $373,570. The middle half earned between $180,610 and $530,700.

The median hourly wage was $172.38 in May 2025. The 75th percentile was $255.15 and the 90th was $316.97. BLS hourly wages equal annual wages divided by 2,080 hours.

The highest 10 percent of employed orthopedic surgeons earned more than $659,290 a year in May 2025. That is $300,740 above the median.

No. The BLS wage survey covers employees. It leaves out the self-employed and owners and partners of unincorporated firms, so practice-owner income is not in the table.

Among the industries with a published figure, general medical and surgical hospitals pay the highest mean, $442,340. BLS shows outpatient care centers only as at or above $239,200.

BLS does not say. It lists seven states with a mean at or above $239,200 and prints no dollar figure for any of them, so the states cannot be ranked.

BLS counted 14,100 employed orthopedic surgeons in its May 2025 wage survey. Its projections count 15,500 jobs in 2025, a figure that includes the self-employed.

BLS projects 4 percent growth from 2025 to 2035, from 15,500 to 16,100 jobs. That matches the 4 percent projected for all physicians and surgeons.

Yes, at the median. Their $358,550 median is $82,620 above the $275,930 median for all physicians and surgeons. Five listed specialties have a higher median.

BLS annual wages assume a 2,080-hour year. A surgeon who works more hours for the same salary earns less per hour, so the hourly rate is the fair comparison.

No. The calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server. The Save button stores a result only on your own device.

• BLS OEWS Profiles, May 2025 national estimates (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Select 29-1242 Orthopedic Surgeons, Except Pediatric. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Physicians and Surgeons (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Duties, training, median pay by specialty and 2025 to 2035 outlook. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS technical notes for the May 2025 OEWS estimates (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Defines the wage: straight-time gross pay, 2,080-hour year. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS OEWS frequently asked questions (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Who the survey covers, and the $239,200 reporting limit and its change in May 2025. Read 2026-10-02.)