Surgeon Salary Calculator

1. Pick the BLS surgeon occupation that matches your work. General, vascular, cardiothoracic, plastic and neurological surgeons use surgeons, all other. Then choose annual salary or hourly rate.
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 general surgeon paid $430,000 a year for 50 hours a week and 48 weeks. That is $179.17 an hour, about the 46th percentile for surgeons, all other. The annual figure alone reads about the 54th.

A surgeon salary is the gross pay a surgeon earns in a year as an employee, before tax and deductions. The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) splits surgeons into four occupations and publishes a wage table for each.

Surgeons operate on patients to treat injuries, such as broken bones, diseases, such as cancerous tumors, and deformities. BLS classes them apart from physicians who do not operate.

BLS has no table named general surgeons. General surgery falls in surgeons, all other, along with every surgical specialty that is not orthopedic, ophthalmic or pediatric. This page therefore offers no general, vascular, plastic or cardiothoracic selector. BLS does not publish those wages, and the tool does not model them.

The four tables hold 49,380 employee jobs in total. This tool is for employed surgeons checking an offer, a raise or a schedule change. 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 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. Call pay, year-end bonuses and profit sharing 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 base annual pay is checked against the annual wages in the same way.
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 surgeons, all other table the tool loads first. Switch the occupation to load the orthopedic, ophthalmologist or pediatric surgeon table.

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 verdict uses hourly pay so that part-time and long-week schedules are judged fairly. The annual percentile is shown beside it. The two match only on a 2,080-hour year.

A general surgeon earns a $455,000 base salary. Operating days, clinic and rounds average 55 hours a week over 47 worked weeks. Call pay for the year is $30,000. A second hospital offers $500,000 for the same workload.

The salary is above the annual median of $414,010, yet the hourly rate is below the hourly median of $199.04. The surgeon works 2,585 hours a year, 505 more than the 2,080 behind BLS annual wages. The second offer moves hourly pay to about the 49th percentile.

Surgical Occupation

The BLS occupation sets the table. Median annual wages run from $300,080 for ophthalmologists to $559,030 for pediatric surgeons.

Industry

Employer type changes the average. Outpatient care centers pay surgeons, all other the highest mean, but they employ only 720 of them.

The industries BLS lists with the highest annual mean wage for surgeons in the all other group. Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

For orthopedic surgeons, BLS shows the outpatient care center mean only as at or above $239,200. General hospitals follow at $442,340 and offices of physicians at $365,750.

Where Surgeons Work

The industries BLS lists with the highest employment of surgeons in the all other group. Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

Hours and Call

Long weeks lower the hourly wage behind a salary. Call pay is premium pay, which BLS leaves out of its wage figures. Enter call pay in the other annual pay field. The salary to hourly calculator converts a salary on any schedule.

Employee or Owner

The survey counts employees only. Self-employed surgeons and partners of unincorporated groups are not in the tables. The Occupational Outlook Handbook counts 54,000 surgeon jobs in 2025 with the self-employed included, against 49,380 employee jobs in the four wage tables.

Sample Size

Surgical occupations are small. The pediatric surgeon employment estimate has a 33.7 percent relative standard error, and the mean wage 5.1 percent. Treat small gaps with care.

Surgeons earn more than most physicians who do not operate, but not more than all of them. Cardiologists have a higher median than three of the four surgeon occupations.

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

Two things stand out. First, the orthopedic 90th percentile of $659,290 is above the 90th for surgeons, all other, although the orthopedic median is $55,460 lower. Second, the low end is far from the middle. A quarter of surgeons, all other earn less than $134,850, which is below the family medicine 25th percentile of $162,420. BLS does not say which jobs make up that low tail.

The median for all physicians and surgeons together was $275,930 in May 2025, according to the Occupational Outlook Handbook.

Benchmarking an Employed Contract

Enter the base salary with the real weekly hours. An orthopedic salary of $520,000 over 50 hours and 48 weeks is $216.67 an hour, near the 63rd percentile.

Comparing Two Workloads

Keep the salary and change the hours. The hourly percentile shows what a heavier call schedule costs per hour worked.

Checking an Ophthalmology Offer

Pick the ophthalmologist table. A $310,000 salary on 40 hours and 50 weeks is $155.00 an hour, about the 55th percentile.

Planning After Fellowship

Surgical training runs long, and loan balances grow with it. Set the monthly gross figure against the payment from the student loan payoff calculator. The result is gross pay, so read the gross vs net income guide before you budget.

1. Looking for a General Surgeon Table

BLS publishes none. General surgeons are counted in surgeons, all other. Any page that quotes a BLS wage for general surgeons alone is quoting something BLS does not publish.

2. Quoting the Old $239,200 Figure

Older releases showed surgeon wages only as equal to or greater than $239,200. That was a reporting limit, not a wage. The May 2025 tables print dollar figures above it.

3. Ranking by Annual Pay Alone

A surgeon on 2,585 hours and a surgeon on 2,080 hours with the same salary do not earn the same wage. The verdict on this page uses hourly pay.

4. Counting Partner Income as Salary

Profit distributions from a surgical group are not wages in the survey. Enter the employed base pay only, or expect the band to overstate your rank.

5. Trusting the Top Industry Row

The $428,330 outpatient mean for surgeons, all other rests on 720 jobs. It is a weak guide to a single offer.

6. Using Private Survey Bases with BLS Percentiles

Private compensation surveys and BLS use different samples and pay definitions. Mixing them gives a rank that neither source supports.

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 include production bonuses and incentive pay. They exclude overtime pay, on-call pay, shift differentials, profit sharing and year-end bonuses. Keep the excluded items in the other annual pay field so the comparison stays like for like.

Surgeons, all other had a median annual wage of $414,010 in May 2025, according to BLS. The mean was $373,930. The middle half earned between $134,850 and $511,420.

The BLS median hourly wage for surgeons, all other was $199.04 in May 2025. The 75th percentile was $245.87 and the 90th was $315.06.

BLS does not publish a wage for general surgeons alone. They are part of surgeons, all other, where the median was $414,010 in May 2025. That group also holds other surgical specialties.

Orthopedic surgeons had a median annual wage of $358,550 in May 2025. The 75th percentile was $530,700 and the 90th was $659,290.

Pediatric surgeons have the highest median, at $559,030 a year in May 2025. The occupation is small, with 1,190 employee jobs, so the estimate carries more sampling error.

Yes. BLS places ophthalmologists in its surgeons group because they perform eye surgery. Their median annual wage was $300,080 in May 2025.

A long low tail pulls the average down. For surgeons, all other the 10th percentile is $80,320 and the 25th is $134,850, far below the median of $414,010.

Partly. BLS wages include production bonuses and incentive pay. They exclude on-call pay, overtime, profit sharing and year-end bonuses, so total cash pay is often higher than the wage shown.

Only those paid as employees. The survey excludes the self-employed and owners or partners of unincorporated firms, so partner income from a private surgical group is not in the tables.

Surgeons typically need a bachelor degree, 4 years of medical school and 3 to 9 years of internship and residency, according to BLS. A subspecialty fellowship adds 1 to 3 years.

BLS projects surgeon employment to grow 4 percent from 2025 to 2035, from 54,000 to 56,200 jobs. The projected average for all occupations is 3 percent.

• BLS OEWS Profiles, May 2025 national estimates (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Select 29-1249, 29-1242, 29-1241 or 29-1243. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Physicians and Surgeons (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Duties, education, 2025 median pay by specialty and the 2025 to 2035 outlook. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS OEWS frequently asked questions (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Who the survey covers, the self-employed exclusion and the wage reporting limit. 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.)