General Surgeon Salary, Hourly Rates, and Locum Income

What Is the Average General Surgeon Salary?

General surgery compensation sits higher than many people assume because the national benchmarks include total compensation — base salary plus bonuses, call pay, and productivity incentives that drive the real number for most practicing surgeons. Across the major national surveys, most general surgeons earning in full-time clinical roles land in the $371,000 to $483,000 range, with self-reported aggregators pushing the top of the band above $500,000.

National Salary Benchmarks

Why General Surgery Salaries Vary So Much

Not all salary data measures the same thing. BLS reports employer-paid wages through its SOC 29-1249 code (“Surgeons, Except Ophthalmologists”), which aggregates general surgeons with other non-ophthalmology surgical subspecialties — it is not a clean general-surgery-only figure. Doximity and SalaryDr reflect self-reported total compensation from their physician member panels, which typically run higher because they capture bonuses, productivity incentives, and call pay that BLS excludes. Medscape sits in between, reporting average total compensation from its annual physician survey.

Merritt Hawkins reports starting salaries from physician search engagements, which represent what hospitals and health systems offer new hires — a narrower slice than established-surgeon surveys. The range across their placements ($275,000 to $625,000) reflects the distance between community hospital starting roles and high-volume partnership tracks.

Each source is valid, but each captures a different population and a different definition of compensation. The honest framing is a range with context, not a single number.

General Surgery Hourly Rates

General surgery is procedure-based, so hourly pay is a less natural unit than in shift-based specialties like emergency medicine. That said, hourly equivalents are useful for comparing employed and locum structures.

Hourly Pay Breakdown

Sources:BLS OEWS, Physician Side Gigs Locums Database (June 2025, $193/hr self-reported average), Sermo (2026, $200–$265/hr range), and ZipRecruiter(December 2025, $137/hr aggregator average).

The range runs wider than most specialties because public locum data for surgical roles comes from fundamentally different sources. Job board aggregators like ZipRecruiter ($137/hr) capture a broad mix of postings including lower-acuity and shorter-duration assignments, while physician-reported databases and staffing firm data ($193–$265/hr) reflect rates for experienced surgeons in agency-placed hospital coverage roles. The midpoint of self-reported data sits around $200/hr.

Where General Surgery Pays More

State-level BLS data for general surgery uses the SOC 29-1249 “Surgeons, Except Ophthalmologists” proxy, which includes multiple surgical subspecialties — not general surgery alone. These figures represent mean annual wages and should be read as directional rather than precise general-surgery benchmarks.

Higher-paying states cluster in the Mountain West and Upper Midwest, following the same rural-premium pattern seen in other surgical specialties. High cost of living does not reliably translate into higher surgical pay — New York and California sit on opposite ends despite both being high-cost markets. AAMC data shows national general surgery physician density at approximately 7 per 100,000 population, with distribution gaps driving the regional premium.

What a Full-Time Clinical Load Looks Like in General Surgery

No single professional society publishes a canonical general surgery workload benchmark the way ACEP does for emergency medicine or SHM does for hospital medicine. Self-reported data from SalaryDr (2026, 117 verified submissions) indicates that general surgeons work approximately 64 hours per week on average — substantially higher than the physician average. A typical full-time general surgeon splits time between operating room days (3 to 4 per week), clinic days, and on-call coverage, with call pay and after-hours cases adding meaningfully to total compensation.

The average signing bonus for new general surgery positions runs $38,215 (Merritt Hawkins 2025), and 86% of respondents on SalaryDr report receiving annual bonuses averaging $110,328 on top of a $490,501 base.

The four scenarios below reference a general surgery clinical load and use weekly framing, which better reflects how surgical income accumulates than hourly calculations.

General Surgery Locum Tenens Income Potential

Locum work in general surgery typically involves coverage assignments at hospitals needing temporary surgical staffing — trauma coverage, OR backfill for leave or recruitment gaps, or rural site rotations. The financial case is straightforward, but schedule control and the ability to step out of call-sharing disputes and hospital committee obligations are the bigger draws for many general surgeons who transition to locum work.

Locum rates for general surgery range from $150 to $265 per hour depending on assignment type, acuity, and geography. Locum work allows surgeons to control workload and schedule.

To exceed $550K:

• Target trauma and high-acuity coverage
• Take additional call
• Work in underserved markets

What 1099 General Surgeons Actually Take Home

A locum gross of $250,000 to $500,000 (depending on weeks worked and rate) compares differently to a $434,000 employed salary once taxes and benefits are factored in. 1099 surgeons absorb health insurance, retirement, PTO, CME, malpractice tail, and self-employment tax directly. They also gain tax advantages that W-2 employees cannot access:

• Business expense deductions for licensing, continuing medical education, home office, surgical loupes and instruments, and travel
• SEP-IRA and Solo 401(k) contributions that can shelter substantially more than the W-2 employee contribution limit
• Qualified Business Income deduction up to 20 percent for eligible pass-through income
• S-corporation election at higher income levels to split income between salary and distributions

Most surgeons 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 earn.

Surgeon Specialization Paths That Influence Compensation

Subspecialization can move the income needle in either direction for general surgeons.

• Trauma and acute care surgery may increase earning potential through additional call pay and coverage premiums at Level I and II trauma centers
• Colorectal surgery fellowship positions are relatively few and compensation tracks close to general surgery averages, with some geographic variation
• Surgical oncology opens academic and NCI-designated center roles, sometimes with higher total compensation but often with a research-time offset
• Minimally invasive and robotic surgery expertise increasingly commands volume-based productivity bonuses as health systems invest in robotic platforms
• Academic surgery earns less than community practice in national datasets. ACS Bulletin (September 2025) reported academic surgeon salaries grew at 2.9% CAGR from 2017 to 2023, trailing US inflation (3.69% average over the same period). A persistent gender pay gap remains: women earned 77 cents per dollar compared to men in 2023 across academic surgical specialties.

General Surgery Salary Trends

General surgery compensation has continued to rise across the major benchmarks, though the pace varies by data source. Medscape (2025) reports approximately 3% year-over-year growth. Doximity (2025) places general surgery at $482,574 average total compensation for 2024, ranking 19th among all specialties. Marit Health (2025) reports a real-time median of $480,258 from 41 verified physician submissions.

SalaryDr (2026) reports a median of $550,000 with an average of $585,741 from 117 verified submissions, suggesting the top of the market has separated further from BLS-reported means. The gap between self-reported and BLS data reflects composition differences: BLS captures employer-paid wages, while self-reported surveys include bonuses, productivity incentives, and partnership distributions that drive real-world surgical income.

The Merritt Hawkins starting salary for general surgery holds at $419,000 average with a $38,215 signing bonus (range $275,000 to $625,000). Year-over-year change: 0%, flat — suggesting the starting market has plateaued while established-surgeon compensation continues climbing.

AAMC workforce projections point to a physician shortage of 10,100 to 19,900 surgeons by 2036. HRSA projects 91% workforce adequacy for general surgery by 2038 — a 9% shortfall that sustains demand for both employed and locum coverage.

Choosing a Locum Tenens Partner You Can Trust

The locum industry has a baseline problem. Smaller agencies often introduce friction through credentialing delays, licensing gaps, unclear malpractice coverage, and payment issues.

Barton differentiates through:

• Clinical leadership built by practicing physicians. A Chief Medical Officer ensures clinical context across the process.
• Financial strategy built for physicians.Through Earned, Barton supports tax planning and long-term financial optimization.
• Continuous learning integrated into the work.Reflective-practice CME tied to real clinical experience.