Recruiting a pediatric surgeon.

What does a pediatric surgeon earn?

BLS publishes both a mean wage and an employment figure for pediatric surgeons in only one state: New York, $433,430 a year with 90 employed (BLS, May 2025 release). That is too few to rank.

The rest of the states and the District of Columbia are left out because BLS withholds or top-codes a figure or has no row. The pediatric surgery salary page has every state, the metro areas and BLS’s caveats.

BLS's pediatric surgeons occupation includes every pediatric surgical specialty, pediatric neurosurgeons among them, and shows a national mean of $502,050 (BLS, May 2025 release) a year and a median of $559,030 (BLS, May 2025 release) across about 1,190 (BLS, May 2025 release) employed. With so few surgeons, BLS publishes state figures for very few states, as the panel above shows.

Offers come mostly from children's hospitals and academic departments as salaries with productivity incentives, call pay and academic rank. Candidates compare the call burden among the surgeons on the service, the case mix, including neonatal surgery and trauma, and protected time for teaching or research.

Where do pediatric surgeons look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

Most new hires finish a fellowship after residency

Who employs them

Children's hospitals, academic medical centers, large health systems with pediatric units, and a small number of private pediatric surgery groups.

Who you compete with for candidates

Academic children's hospitals offering rank, residents and research, which most candidates trained in and know well.

Pediatric surgeons finish a general surgery residency and then a pediatric surgery fellowship, and the fellowship directors know every graduate personally. Most positions are filled through that network and through national meetings rather than through postings.

Experienced pediatric surgeons move for leadership roles, a better call arrangement or family reasons. A hospital building a pediatric surgical service should expect a search measured in seasons, not weeks.

Every board’s listing, with its posting lengths and how CV access is sold, is in the job board directory; what a physician job posting costs compares them.

The locum agency directory has each agency’s states, malpractice coverage and physician pay where it states them.

What does an open pediatric surgery position cost?

What the calculator has for pediatric surgery

• Revenue one physician brings in: no published figure, so you supply the annual revenue one physician in the specialty brings your organization
• Locum pay: $180 to $250 an hour (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025)
• First-year pay: $502,050 a year (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025)
• Contingency agency fee: 20 to 30% of first-year pay (estimate, MedStaff Nationwide, 2026)

The calculator publishes no revenue figure for pediatric surgery, so the worked example asks for yours. The cost that matters most is transfers: children needing surgery are sent to another hospital, and the referring pediatricians begin sending them there directly.

Locum pediatric surgeons are scarce and paid $180 to $250 (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025) an hour. When a service of two or three surgeons loses one, call frequency rises sharply for the rest, and keeping the remaining surgeons is part of the recruiting problem.

Open the calculator with pediatric surgery chosen

Which recruiting channels work for pediatric surgery?

With so few candidates, every one of them hears about a serious opening. The question is whether the service is built so that a surgeon would want it: enough partners to share call, pediatric anesthesia and nursing, and a referral base.

Questions to ask

• How many surgeons share call, and how often would the new one take it?
• Does the hospital have pediatric anesthesia and a neonatal unit to support the cases?
• Which fellowships have graduates who might want your region?
• What academic appointment, if any, comes with the role?

Which rules bite pediatric surgery recruiting?

Children's hospitals pay pediatric surgeons directly, and the surgeons admit and operate in those hospitals, so the federal limits on hospital pay to referring physicians apply.

Every federal rule this site cites, grouped by what a practice or recruiter is doing, is on the federal rules page. For the contract itself (pay models, tail coverage, restrictive covenants), read the physician employment contract, clause by clause. These notes describe the rules and cite them; they are not legal advice for a particular offer or contract.