Anesthesiologist Salary, Hourly Rates, and Locum Income

What Is the Average Anesthesiology Physician Salary?

Anesthesiology tends to pay more than most physician specialties because the work is procedural, tightly scheduled, and directly impacts operating room throughput. Most anesthesiologists earn between $336,000 and $545,000, but that wide range isn’t just about experience or geography. It reflects a fragmented pay structure across employed roles, partnerships, and independent contractor models rather than a single, consistent market rate.

National Salary Benchmarks

Why Anesthesiology Salaries Vary So Much

The Bureau of Labor Statistics reports employer-paid wages, which leaves out self-employed anesthesiologists. In a specialty where partnership income and contractor work are common, that can make total compensation look lower than it actually is. On the flip side, platforms like Doximity, Medscape, SalaryDr, and Marit Health rely on physician-reported data. That tends to capture a fuller picture, including partnership distributions and locum income.

The second piece is how anesthesiologists actually get paid. It’s not built around a standard 40-hour week. Compensation is tied to operating room days, case volume, ASA units billed, and call coverage.

According to the American Society of Anesthesiologists 2024 Commercial Conversion Factor Survey, the mean commercial rate was $80.70 per ASA unit, with a median of $74.59. That data came from 297 practices, covering more than 12,000 physician FTEs and over 14 million cases. Notably, that conversion factor dropped 5.5% year over year, the largest decline in the past decade.

On the Medicare side, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services set the 2025 anesthesia conversion factor at $20.32 per ASA unit, down from $20.77 in 2024. If compensation is tied to billings instead of a fixed salary, those conversion factor changes directly impact income.

Anesthesiology Physician Hourly and Per-Day Rates

Anesthesiology compensation is typically structured around operating room (OR) days rather than standard hourly schedules, reflecting how work is actually delivered and measured in the specialty. The hourly view is still useful for comparing W-2 employment against locum work and against the BLS employer-paid wage.

Hourly and Per-Day Pay Breakdown

Sources: BLS OEWS Anesthesiologists 29-1211 for the W-2 hourly derivation. The locum rate band reflects industry-cited rates from aggregated public market data for anesthesiology locum coverage.

Where Anesthesiology Pays More

Geography is one of the strongest signals in anesthesiology pay. State means from the BLS OES 2024 cross-industry release cluster the highest reported anesthesiology wages in Minnesota ($465,340), Montana ($459,360), Maine ($415,540), Florida ($404,100), New Hampshire ($402,950), North Carolina ($397,850), Nebraska ($389,480), Iowa ($385,010), and Indiana ($378,850). The 2025 Stroudwater Associates and National Rural Health Association Rural Provider Compensation report found that median rural anesthesiology compensation rose 14 percent year over year, the largest jump of any tracked specialty.

The lowest reported state means in the BLS series include several large coastal markets and the District of Columbia ($295,970). High cost of living does not reliably translate into higher anesthesiology pay.

Anesthesiology Locum Tenens Income Potential

Locum work aligns directly with how anesthesiology is delivered: in blocks of OR time.

What 1099 Anesthesiologists Actually Take Home

A $275–$450 per hour locum rate is meaningfully higher than the roughly $162 per hour W-2 average reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that gap is where the opportunity sits. While 1099 anesthesiologists take on costs that W-2 employees don’t,they also gain control over how their income is structured, taxed, and scaled. For many physicians, that flexibility is what drives higher net earning potential over time, not just the headline rate.

Locum physicians can:

• Deduct business expenses like licensing, CME, travel, and equipment, reducing taxable income
• Contribute significantly more to retirement through SEP-IRA or Solo 401(k) plans
• Qualify for the Qualified Business Income (QBI) deduction, potentially reducing taxable income by up to 20%
• Use an S-corporation structure at higher income levels to split earnings between salary and distributions, improving tax efficiency

For anesthesiologists who actively manage their structure, locum work isn’t just higher hourly pay. It’s a different income model with more levers to optimize earnings, taxes, and long-term wealth.

Most physicians do not optimize this alone. Barton partners with Earned, a wealth and tax firm built specifically for doctors, to give locum clinicians entity formation, tax planning, and long-term financial strategy designed around how physicians actually earn.

Physician Specialization Paths That Influence Compensation

Subspecialty training in anesthesiology can change the income profile, but the direction depends on practice setting and call structure as much as on the fellowship label.

• Cardiothoracic anesthesiology typically commands a premium in academic and high-acuity tertiary centers tied to cardiac surgical volume
• Pediatric anesthesiology often runs comparable to or slightly below general anesthesiology in national datasets, with higher concentration in academic and freestanding children’s hospital settings
• Pain medicine opens procedural and clinic-based practice patterns that change the work model and can carry separate billing economics
• Critical care anesthesiology combines OR and ICU coverage and is one of the highest-demand subsets in locum work
• Obstetric anesthesiology leans toward call-heavy hospital coverage with stipend structures for L&D presence

Anesthesiology Salary Trends

Anesthesiology compensation has continued to climb across the physician-reported benchmarks. SalaryDr’s 2026 dataset shows a median verified anesthesiology compensation of $535,000, drawn from 132 self-reported submissions. Marit Health’s 2025 anesthesiology benchmark sits at $545,352. The BLS OEWS May 2024 release reports a mean annual wage of $336,640 for the cross-industry national series.The gap between BLS-reported wages and physician-reported compensation underscores the divergence between employer-paid salary and total economic earnings, particularly in markets with high contractor and partnership participation.

The most material recent trend is the conversion factor compression on the billing side, covered earlier in this guide. The combined ASA commercial and CMS Medicare conversion factor pressure compresses income for anesthesiologists paid on a per-unit basis but matters less for those on flat salaries or stipend-supported coverage models.

The HRSA 2025 workforce projection shows anesthesiology at 83 percent supply adequacy by 2038, a structural 17 percent shortage. AAMC projections describe a range from a shortage of 19,500 to a surplus of 4,300 anesthesiologists by 2036, depending on demand assumptions.

Choosing a Locum Tenens Partner You Can Trust

Variability in staffing partner quality can materially affect assignment outcomes, particularly in credentialing timelines, malpractice coverage clarity, and payment reliability. These factors often have a greater impact on physician experience than rate alone.

Established firms differentiate through operational infrastructure, clinical oversight, and consistency across assignments.

Physician-led clinical leadership. Barton has a Chief Medical Officer and physician-led clinical oversight, a structure that is unheard of in the locum staffing category.

Earned partnership for physician financial life. Barton partners with Earned, a wealth and tax firm built specifically for doctors, to give locum clinicians access to entity formation, tax planning, and long-term financial strategy designed around physician income.

Reflective-practice continuing medical education platform. Barton operates a continuing medical education platform built around reflective practice on clinical work physicians are already doing.