Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric offer sit among all 12,110 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 12,110 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 2,040 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 36.1% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Massachusetts, whose location quotient of 2.13 says this work is 2.13 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

BLS top-codes or suppresses part of this occupation's national ladder, so the published center is the median of $239,200 or more and the mean of $301,500. The state table below is the more useful negotiating document: it shows how far the same job title travels across the 38 states with published estimates.

Pay by state

The state spread for Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric runs from the $218,770 median in Connecticut down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (2,040 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Ophthalmologists, Except Pediatric stands number 661 by employment and number 14 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, the group median wage is $98,340 across 71 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 143% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.1% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 0 of the 11 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $239,200 or more, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 870 jobs, 7.2% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $329,850 a year, against $362,770 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $19,933 a month before tax, $9,200 biweekly, $4,600 weekly. The top of this ladder is top-coded by BLS (shown as $239,200+), so the full experience premium cannot be printed from the published table; the 25th percentile, $181,490, is the firmest anchor for an early-career offer. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

Related occupations in Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Dietetic Technicians, Athletic Trainers, Radiologists, Psychiatrists, Surgeons, All Other, Surgical Assistants. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.