Physician pay raises do not correlate to increases in happiness, data shows.
Becker’s gathered data from Medscape’s “Physician Mental Health & Well-Being Report” in 2025 and 2026 and pay data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics for 2024 to 2025 to find the percentage change in both categories across 27 physician specialties.
Cardiology saw the largest pay increase in the dataset at 10% yet reported a happiness decline of -2%.
Five specialties that saw a pay decrease also reported a minimum 2% increase in happiness. Meanwhile, anesthesiology, orthopedics and otolaryngology all saw pay increases of 5% or more but posted happiness losses. Only two specialties — allergy and immunology, and psychiatry — saw both pay and happiness declines.
Here are specialties by their happiness and pay changes:
| Specialty | Pay change | Happiness change |
| Psychiatry | -3% | -2% |
| Allergy and immunology | -3% | -9% |
| Pulmonary medicine | -2% | 8% |
| Oncology and hematology | -2% | 3% |
| Dermatology | -1% | 4% |
| Nephrology | -1% | 3% |
| Physical medicine and rehabilitation | -1% | 2% |
| Rheumatology | 0% | 11% |
| Pediatrics | 0% | -1% |
| Pathology | 1% | -5% |
| Infectious diseases | 2% | 19% |
| Critical care | 2% | 7% |
| Plastic surgery | 2% | 3% |
| Family medicine | 2% | -3% |
| General surgery | 2% | -8% |
| Neurology | 3% | 9% |
| Gastroenterology | 3% | 6% |
| Diabetes and endocrinology | 4% | -2% |
| OB-GYN | 5% | 1% |
| Internal medicine | 5% | 0% |
| Otolaryngology | 5% | -3% |
| Emergency medicine | 8% | 1% |
| Anesthesiology | 8% | -1% |
| Orthopedics and orthopedic surgery | 8% | -1% |
| Radiology | 9% | 7% |
| Ophthalmology | 9% | 0% |
| Cardiology | 10% | -2% |
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