LocumTenens.com survey data indicate that the average psychiatrist salary
increased between 2006 and 2007. In fact, 60 percent of psychiatrists
responding to the physician recruitment firm’s 2008 salary survey reported
income gains between the preceding two years. Among those respondents, 26
percent reported increases of 10 percent or more.
A quarter of responding psychiatrists said their gross personal incomes remained
about the same between 2006 and 2007, while only 15 percent reported income
decreases between the two years.
LocumTenens.com Executive Vice President Michael Davis suggests that recent
psychiatrist salary gains reflect a growing shortage of psychiatrists, since
almost half (45 percent) of U.S. psychiatrists currently are age 55 or older
and only 28 percent are age 44 or younger. (Twenty-seven percent are between
the ages of 45 and 54, according to the 2008 edition of the American Medical
Association’s Physician Characteristics and Distribution in the US.)
LocumTenens.com pegs the average psychiatrist salary at $183,232, roughly an
eight-percent increase over the average $169,833 for 2007 respondents. You can
find the complete 2008 psychiatrist salary survey results posted in this
Psychiatrist Career and Resource Center, as well.
Regardless of compensation concerns, most 2008 psychiatrist respondents (83%)
said they would choose medicine as a career again if given the choice.
Sixty-four percent (64%) of responding psychiatrists had been practicing for 10
years or more, 61 percent were male and 97 percent were board certified (67%)
or board eligible (39%). While almost half (47 percent) of respondents were
employer-based, 20 percent were in private practice and only 16 percent
reported working on a locum tenens, or contract, basis exclusively.
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