Recruiting a psychiatrist.

What does a psychiatrist earn?

Ranked among the states and the District of Columbia where BLS publishes both the mean wage and the employment figure; 6 of the 51 are left out because BLS withholds or top-codes a figure or has no row. The psychiatry salary page has every state, the metro areas and BLS’s caveats.

BLS puts the mean for psychiatrists at $269,940 (BLS, May 2025 release) a year and the median at $281,870 (BLS, May 2025 release), with about 27,980 (BLS, May 2025 release) on payrolls. State and federal hospitals, prisons and community mental health centers are large employers here, and their pay scales shape the state figures.

Psychiatrists who own an unincorporated private practice, including some that take no insurance, are outside the survey. Candidates often compare an employed offer with what they could earn on their own, so the salary has to hold up against that alternative, along with the call and inpatient load the job carries.

Where do psychiatrists look for jobs?

Where new hires come from

New hires come from residency or after a fellowship

Who employs them

Hospitals with inpatient units, community mental health centers, state and federal facilities, correctional health, academic departments, private group practices and telepsychiatry companies.

Who you compete with for candidates

Telehealth platforms offering remote schedules, cash-pay private practice, and federal employers with loan repayment and pensions.

Residents finish general psychiatry and many add a fellowship in child and adolescent, addiction, geriatric or consultation-liaison psychiatry. Child and adolescent psychiatrists are especially scarce, and employers who need one start talking to fellows a year out.

The American Psychiatric Association runs a career center for the specialty. Psychiatrists considering a change also ask peers about the culture of a unit, caseload and safety, so the reputation of the service travels further than any ad.

• APA JobCentral Per posting

  $449 per 30-day posting

  The psychiatry association's career center, with single postings and packages that add its resume bank. A posting that states the caseload and the remote options gets read.

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 psychiatry position cost?

What the calculator has for psychiatry

• Revenue one physician brings in: $1,820,512 a year (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019)
• Locum pay: $220 to $250 an hour (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025)
• First-year pay: $269,940 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 carries a published revenue figure for psychiatry, $1,820,512 (estimate, AMN Healthcare (Merritt Hawkins), 2019) a year to an affiliated hospital, mostly from inpatient days. Outpatient clinics bring in far less per psychiatrist and should enter their own collections.

Locum psychiatrists, including remote ones, run $220 to $250 (estimate, Locumstory (CHG Healthcare), 2025) an hour in physician pay. For an inpatient unit, a vacancy can mean closing beds; for a clinic, it means waiting lists that send patients to emergency departments in crisis.

Open the calculator with psychiatry chosen

Which recruiting channels work for psychiatry?

Flexibility is the currency. Employers that offer part of the week remote, a reasonable caseload and real support from therapists and nurses fill positions that a higher salary alone does not.

Questions to ask

• How many patients a day would the psychiatrist see, and for how long each?
• Can part of the week be remote, and is that in writing?
• Is your clinic in a mental health shortage area for loan repayment?
• What happens to the waiting list and the inpatient beds while the seat is empty?

Which rules bite psychiatry recruiting?

Remote work and cash practice change which federal rules matter in a psychiatry offer: prescribing across distance, Medicare enrollment, and the usual limits on how an employer may pay a physician who admits patients.

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.