salary - Jezebel

posts about #salary more →
Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
Will You Buy What Tina Fey Is Selling?

Your version of Internet Explorer is not supported. Please upgrade to the most recent version in order to view comments.

Dsmvwl Admin Promote to frontpage Approve user Ban user ×

DoctorJezebel
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
Umm what?! They definitely must be including residents. The lowest physician wage I've ever seen *offered* is $140,000, and that was for half time. There's a lot of overhead in primary care though, so if you're a pediatrician and own your own clinic and don't know how to manage your money (which they don't teach in medical school), you may make just a fraction of your gross billings.
Reply

DoctorJezebel was starred DoctorJezebel was unstarred

Mafalda para Presidente
06/27/09

@DoctorJezebel: I'm guessing they are including residents (which is still work, you know, and it's for 3-7 years depending of the specialty, so it's not that insignificant...those people are already doctors). Maybe they're also taking into consideration malpractice and other deductions. But yes,there are physicians (primary care, mostly) who make less than 100K per year. After taxes, malpractice insurance, and the ever-lowering insurance reimbursements, many of them don't make as much as people think.

Also, it's possible that a greater fraction of female physicians work part-time or lower-paying (but with better hours) jobs in order to be able to be home a bit more with their kids. The hours at hospitals are brutal.
Reply

chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish
06/27/09

@DoctorJezebel: Even including residents, the numbers are way off by anything I can figure. According to the AMA and the AAFP, there are something like just over 900,000 physicians in the U.S.

[answers.google.com]

90,000 of which are residents, interns or fellows:

[findarticles.com]

So even factoring in the 10% of artificially low resident salaries, still the numbers make very little sense.
Reply

DoctorJezebel
06/27/09

@chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish: Agreed. It simply doesn't make sense. A head-hunter recently offered me $650K to move to North Dakota. While I won't ever make that money in major cities unless I sell my soul 5 times over, it's still proof-of-concept. The salaries are out there, but the entry cost (these days) is just way too high, and so many doctors are sadly up to their ears in educational debt.
Reply

DoctorJezebel was starred DoctorJezebel was unstarred

chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish
06/27/09

@DoctorJezebel: Yes. We'll be paying off Mrs. Chritter's loans for a good many years (she's doing her residency now), and we're luckier than many.
Reply

Mafalda para Presidente
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
...And this is part of why I quit med school. Why would I want to go through 8 more years of training when I can choose another career with better hours (no call, no intern year, no residency, no debt) and make about the same thing?

And notice I said, "part of it." I had many other more powerful reasons.
Reply

chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
I don't get those physician's salaries numbers at ALL. No other information I'm seeing out there is even close to being that low.

[www.payscale.com]

[www.allied-physicians.com]

[mdsalaries.blogspot.com]
Reply

Wibbles
06/27/09

@chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish: I figured it out, I think.

Not only are the including residents, DWB and other Pro-Bono work, they are also including people who work part-time for whatever reason. Combined with the fact that women end up in the lower paid specialties, odds are that's dragging the salary numbers down, but even that sounds odd to me.
Reply

Wibbles was starred Wibbles was unstarred

chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish
06/27/09

@Wibbles: I guess that could partly explain it, but as you say, even that sounds very fishy. DWB is a fine organization, but there aren't enough of them from the U.S. to skew the numbers that much. And every other survey I've found (and I could post another half-dozen) is much like the first three I posted. Even resident salaries are a very small percentage of physicians (I'm married to a pediatric resident). It's just very puzzling to me.
Reply

veronykah
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
"Women are flocking to the labor force in record numbers"

Really Forbes? Is this a new phenomenon? Wow WOMEN in the workforce? As opposed to before where women were staying home in record numbers?

Sorry, I just don't get that statement.

Can someone explain to me how this wage gap is determined? If I'm a nurse to they take ALL nurses and find the median wage between ALL of them or do they take nurses with the same number of years on the job and find a median between them and men with the same amount of time on the job?

If all women are being lumped in with women who choose to take time off [years perhaps] to have children wouldn't that skew the findings a bit?
Reply

veronykah was starred veronykah was unstarred

pantsless economist...access RESTORED
06/27/09

@veronykah: It definitely does, and it's a big point wage-gap deniers use in attempts to argue that the wage gap doesn't actually exist. (Even accounting for women taking time off, taking lower-paying occupations, part time work, etc, there's definitely still a gap.)
Reply

SarahHeartburn
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
Whatever. A lot of my students here in Spain are doctors and kind of regret it now, that there are so many other professions in the health fields (very few doctors in Europe make big bucks, but they still work long hours). There are a lot of professions in health care that will pay a good salary, don't involve 10+ years of training and astronomical debt. Nothing against doctors. I just think that kids, especially girls, should get good career advice about the varieties of jobs available in health care.
Reply

SarahHeartburn was starred SarahHeartburn was unstarred

HillGirl
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
My university has a very good Pharmacy School. I know that women outnumber men there by a very high percentage.
Reply

HillGirl was starred HillGirl was unstarred

Alys Brangwin has a huge talent
06/27/09

@HillGirl: Perhaps you are at UNC-Chapel Hill? I recall that women outnumbered men everywhere. I couldn't get a date in that town.
Reply

Plate2.18
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
Interesting. I always hate reading articles like this, though, because I intend to be a doctor (not sure what specialty) and doctors have the worst pay gaps. This article says women only earn 59% of what men earn. Sheesh.

"Women often go into family practice or other lower-paying specialties, she says, rather than work the 80-hour-plus weeks of surgeons."

That would kind of make sense, but every time I see the median salary for doctors it's not just for "doctors," but specifically for surgeons, internists, etc. I'd really like to know what the pay gap is for individual specialties.
Reply

Plate2.18 was starred Plate2.18 was unstarred

Antrack
06/27/09

@Plate2.18: Even in a high-paying specialty, some of your salary is going to come from things like taking call. Male doctors may be more likely to spend more time away from their families at the hospital, whereas female doctors with families would say "forget it, I make enough money and would rather see my kid's soccer game."

I am totally generalizing here, because my doctor mom took the former approach, but that's a story for another time...
Reply

Antrack was starred Antrack was unstarred

chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish
06/27/09

@Plate2.18: There are some good thoughts on the salary disparity between male vs. female physicians here.
Reply

chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish
06/27/09

@chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish: Bah, stupid Gawker software is cutting off my URL.

[mdsalaries.blogspot.com]
Reply

SarahHeartburn
06/27/09

@Antrack: which is why in Europe you'll notice that ab out 75% of pharmacists are women. However, of the younger generation, almost 60 % of medical school classes are women.
Reply

SarahHeartburn was starred SarahHeartburn was unstarred

greengrey
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
"No. 6: Physicians and Surgeons, Women's median yearly earnings: $63,960"

Uh, color me confused. I know nurses who make more than that...
Reply

greengrey was starred greengrey was unstarred

BelleFree
06/27/09

@greengrey (raidersofthelostSTAR): Also, we're talking about median yearly earnings - the literal midpoint. That's high for a median.
Reply

BelleFree was starred BelleFree was unstarred

parafilm
06/27/09

@greengrey (raidersofthelostSTAR):

It's definitely skewed somehow. Residents make like 30-40k a year, and residencies are usually several years long. But I doubt that many physicians (full time, at least) make only 60k a year. With $200,000 in school debt, that's pretty low.
Reply

parafilm was starred parafilm was unstarred

pantsless economist...access RESTORED
06/27/09

@BelleFree: It doesn't say the mean though...I wonder what it is...I smell a skewed distribution!
Reply

chritter is a nocturnal feminist mancatfish
06/27/09

@parafilm: Resident salaries vary a lot by region. In the NYC area, for example, residents make more like 50-60K.
Reply

haguenite
06/27/09

In reply to Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy
I want to go WOOHOO. But then I see this "Overall, women's earnings are about 80% of men's" and I'm all BOOHOO again.
Reply

haguenite was starred haguenite was unstarred

Earlier discussions Other discussions Show all discussions Show featured discussions only Start a new discussion

#salary

Jezebel

SUBSCRIBE TO Jezebel

Prescription For High Pay: Work In A Pharmacy

Will You Buy What Tina Fey Is Selling?

Login

Reset Password

Register

Submit Your Comment