Residents across radiology and other medical specialties are earning average compensation of $67,400 in 2023, according to a new report from Medscape published Wednesday.
The figure represents a 5% uptick from last year, when residents collected an average of $64,200. It also ends two years of stagnation in pay for medical residents, who gained roughly 1% between 2020 to 2022.
Among 1,000 graduates surveyed in the spring—including 60 radiologists—24% said they feel fairly compensated versus 76% who did not.
“When you crunch the numbers, the residents are paid just above a minimum wage rate,” Ahmed Mukhtar Ahmed, MD, a first-year resident at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, told Medscape. “Some can’t even afford to live in the cities they work in. Such a system can feel deeply unjust.”
Asked how much more residents believe they should earn, 26% to 50% was the most popular answer, cited by more than one-third of respondents. Half of those surveyed said that potential earnings are “extremely/very influential” in selecting their specialty, followed by 34% who said “somewhat” and 17% “not at all.”
More than a quarter of respondents said they were carrying over $300,000 in debt, while 21% had none at all and 13% owed between $250,000 to $300,000.
Read more about the survey findings from Medscape:
Marty Stempniak has covered healthcare since 2012, with his byline appearing in the American Hospital Association's member magazine, Modern Healthcare and McKnight's. Prior to that, he wrote about village government and local business for his hometown newspaper in Oak Park, Illinois. He won a Peter Lisagor and Gold EXCEL awards in 2017 for his coverage of the opioid epidemic.