Name: How Much Do Resident Doctors Make?💸 Per Hour Breakdown!⏱️
Uploaded: 2025-10-19T18:02:51.000Z
Duration: 9 min 3 s
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After medical school, you likely have around a quarter million dollars of debt.

Adverbs of manner

But now you're a resident doctor and you finally get paid.

Adverbs of degree

But now the question is how much will you make and will it even put a dent in your debt?

Dr. Jubbal medschoolinsiders.com first, yes, in the US you are paid during residency.

However, residents are not paid very much considering the massive number of hours they are expected to work.

Typically, residents are paid in the high 50s or high $60,000 per year during depending on their specialty, location and year in training.

According to a 2023 Medscape report, the average salary for a resident in the US is now $67,400.

This is up 5% from the previous year, which was $64,200.

In 2022, a resident salary will increase as they advance through their training by a couple thousand dollars a year, and

residency training can last anywhere from three to seven years.

For example, family medicine is a three year residency, radiology takes five years and and neurosurgery lasts seven years.

We'll break this down further later in the video.

So what does that equate to hourly compensation?

The hourly rate of residence varies significantly because while pay is based on a set salary, the number of hours worked can vary by specialty, institution, and

For example, if the resident salary is $60,000 a year and the physician works 50 hours a week, they make approximately $23 an hour.

But if the resident works salary 70 hours a week, that's only approximately $16.50 an hour.

The hourly rate is even worse when a resident is overworked, which happens far too often.

At 85 hours a week, a resident would only make approximately $13.50 an hour, which is less than minimum wage in many states.

After years of training and hundreds of thousands of dollars of medical school bills, it can be incredibly tough on residents to work 80 hour weeks and while only being paid minimum wage.

Now, while the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education limited resident work hours in the United States to a maximum of 80 hours weekly in 2003, there are numerous examples of this rule not being adhered to.

Some specialties are known more than others for going over the 80 hour work week.

Looking at you neurosurgery, there's an abusive culture in healthcare that prioritizes cheap labor for hospitals over the physical and mental health of residents.

Unfortunately, hospitals care about the bottom line and quite simply, overworking residents saves money.

It's cheaper to have a resident do the work that a PA or NP would Normally do I cover the harsh reality of being a resident in the US on my personal Kevin Jubbal, Maryland Channel.

Check out the video where I react to some residents making less than minimum wage when factoring in 80 hour work weeks.

You might be wondering why so many residents work under such harsh and potentially dangerous working conditions.

The sad truth is that after four years of grueling medical school training and the bills that go along with it, for most residents it can feel like they don't have any other option but to grind it out.

But grinding it out can take quite a long time.

Remember, residency training can take as long as seven years for neurosurgery and six for plastic surgery, thoracic surgery and interventional radiology.

A resident salary does increase throughout training, but

not by much compared to the salary of a licensed physician.

Residents who who spend the most time training at six to eight years can expect to earn $13,000 to $18,000 more than their starting salary at the end of training.

This brings the yearly salary up to around $75,000 compared to the salary of a mid level provider such as an NP or pa.

Residents get paid only about half as much while providing comparable levels of care.

you have to remember that physicians typically have hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt collecting interest by the time they reach residency, not to mention the highly skilled labor they're providing and the risk they take on.

Let's break down just what that kind of debt and the interest associated with it looks like.

As a resident making the average salary of $67,400 a year, that equals $5,600 a month.

The average student debt coming out of medical school is approximately $250,000.

Let's be conservative again on interest rates and say the loan interest is at 7%.

This puts monthly interest alone at around $1,500 a month.

Based on Income Driven Repayment Plans or an IDR plan, residents can be approved for a much lower minimum payment, which can be as low as $300 a month.

But keep in mind that only paying the minimum required on your debt will mean you continue to accrue over $1,000 of interest every month.

Let's put it this way, even if you were somehow able to pay $2,000 a month toward your medical school loans for a year, that only equates to reduc by about $6,000 after a year of monthly payments, you would only reduce that 250k to 244k.

It's extremely likely that you won't make any sort of dent in your medical school debt during residency and will come out the other side with more debt than you started with due to accrued interest.

If you'd like us to break down more exact calculations and options for paying off medical school debt in a future video, let us know in the comments.

So what does that mean for your hypothetical monthly finances?

If you pay zero state tax on your income federally, you're looking at paying a little more than $12,000 a year in taxes, which is $1,000 a month, bringing your monthly paycheck down to $4,600.

If you pay a low minimum payment of $500 toward your debt, you're now at $4,100.

The average rent across the US is $1,400 a month.

A low grocery budget for one person is approximately $300, bringing your paycheck down to $2,400.

Now you'll also need to get around the average cost of owning a car varies considerably.

Once again, let's lean conservative and say your monthly transportation costs are only $500 a month, leaving a mere $1,900 left.

With that, you'll need to cover dining out, utilities, phone bill, fitness expenses, medical expenses, travel, social events, holiday gifts, coffee, prescriptions, clothing and new scrubs, any unforeseen emergencies Disability insurance, which every resident should have, contributing to your retirement account, buying educational resources for upcoming board exams and this list could go on the life of a resident making $70,000 is far from luxurious.

The paycheck is not in line with the value provided compared to other healthcare workers, and

it doesn't come close to matching the number of hours they are expected to work.

it can be incredibly stressful to scrimp and watch your student loans go up by hundreds to thousands of dollars every month while you're working your butt off 80 hours a week in the hospital.

The 2023 resident salary and debt report from Medscape shares that only 20% of residents feel fairly compensated for their work during residency.

This is the aver all years of training, but this statistic fluctuates as a physician progresses through residency.

During PGY1 or the first year of residency, 21% of residents reported being happy with their salary.

The percent fluctuates from year to year, but

by the time they reached year eight, 29% of residents reported being satisfied with their compensation.

But keep in mind, if you're at PGY8, you're likely in fellowship and compensation has increased notably compared to where you started.

Residents who were dissatisfied felt it did not reflect their work hours and was not comparable to other medical staff.

So what does this mean for aspiring physicians?

While licensed physicians in the US Earn a sizable and reliable salary in the low to mid six figures, it takes a long time to get there.

And the larger the eventual end game salary, the longer residency will take.

If you're thinking of getting into medicine for financial reasons, understand that while it's great money, it takes a huge investment of time and a massive opportunity cost to become a practicing physician.

You'll have nearly a decade of schooling and training that costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, and

on top of that, you'll only start making six figures after residency, which is seven to 12 years after someone who pursued a career in engineering, coding, finance or entrepreneurship.

If you're an aspiring physician concerned about debt, put in the time as soon as possible to advance your financial education.

Read books, learn from successful mentors, and

watch YouTube videos like the ones in our Money Investing and Finances playlist on this channel.

This includes why Are so Many Doctors broke, student loans 101 and common doctor financial mistakes.