This State Has the Fewest Doctors

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 20, 8:10AM EDT

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This State Has the Fewest Doctors — © imaginima / E+ via Getty Images

There are about 900,000 doctors in America, and the United States has among the highest ratios of doctors to the population of any country in the world. Physicians make an average of $270,000 a year and work an average of 55 hours a week. However, these numbers are at least two years old. One weakness of the data is that it does not cover the number of doctors who have left the field due to COVID-19, either because of fear of infection or a drop in revenue. Nevertheless, the range of what doctors are paid varies widely by specialty and location.
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An annual survey of physicians by Medscape covers a broad spectrum of issues, from pay by gender to pay by state. The doctors who make the most money by far are plastic surgeons, who make an average of $526,000 a year. The lowest-paid doctors in America are pediatricians. They make an average of $221,000 a year, followed by doctors who practice family medicine at $236,000.

How much doctors make by state also varies widely. The Medscape data shows that doctors in Alabama make the most at $348,000, followed by Kentucky by $340,000. The numbers are counterintuitive. The median household income in Alabama is among the lowest of all states at $51,734, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That compares to $65,712 nationwide. Kentucky is also among the lowest in median household income at $52,285.

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The number of doctors in each state is often ranked by physicians per 100,000 residents. Based on this metric, according to Becker’s Hospital Review, the state with the lowest number is Mississippi. Its figure is 191. Idaho follows closely at 192.

Click here to the state where doctors make the least.
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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.