What ophthalmologists earn, state by state.

Find the state in the state table: it gives the mean and median annual wage BLS publishes for ophthalmologists there, with employment and the location quotient. Nationally the mean annual wage is $304,650 and the median $300,080 (BLS, May 2025 release).

34 of the 54 state-level areas have a published mean. The rest have no wage estimate for ophthalmologists; they are listed under the table.

It may not be. Where it is, look first at who and what BLS counts:

• The survey does not count the self-employed or owners and partners in unincorporated firms, so physicians in their own unincorporated practice are left out. Salaried officers and staff of incorporated practices are counted.
• Wages are straight-time gross pay. The base rate, incentive pay and production bonuses are in; overtime, shift differentials, nonproduction bonuses and the employer’s cost of benefits are not.
• The May 2025 figures combine six semiannual panels of survey responses collected over three years, from November 2022 to May 2025. Wages reported in the earlier panels are adjusted to the May 2025 reference date.
• A wage shown as # is at least $239,200 a year and may be far above it; the page prints only the floor.

A survey that asks physicians or medical groups directly counts different people and different pay. Compare the same specialty, the same kind of employer and the same year.

BLS counts 8,950 ophthalmologists on employer payrolls (BLS, May 2025 release), rounded to the nearest ten, with a relative standard error of 13%. Self-employed physicians and owners of unincorporated practices are not in that count, so it describes the employed part of the field.

Of the 34 metro areas where BLS publishes figures for ophthalmologists, San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA has the highest published mean annual wage: $584,430 (BLS, May 2025 release), on employment of 60. 3 more show # for the mean, at or above $239,200 a year, so they cannot be ranked against it. A small metro area can lead on a few dozen jobs, so read the employment and the standard error with the wage. The metro tables show the top ten by mean wage and by employment.

They are the marks BLS puts in a cell instead of a figure. In its own words: # indicates a wage equal to or greater than $115.00 per hour or $239,200 per year; * indicates that a wage estimate is not available; ** indicates that an employment estimate is not available. This page prints “Not available” for the first two and the floor for the third (“$239,200 or more”), never a zero.