The national benchmarks are compiled from the Doximity 2025 Physician Compensation Report (reflecting 2024 earned income, roughly 37,000 physician respondents) and the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2026 (reflecting 2025 earned income, 5,916 respondents), cross-referenced against BLS and AAMC figures. Every number is traceable to its named source — where the sources disagree materially or only one covers a specialty, we show that honestly instead of inventing a midpoint.

Total compensation is everything your employment produces in a year: base salary, productivity or wRVU bonuses, quality incentives, and sign-on or retention payments spread over their term. Physicians comparing only base salary routinely underestimate their market position — two contracts with the same base can differ by six figures once the productivity formula is included.

Because self-reported survey data has real spread between sources, an exact percentile would be false precision. A band tells you what the data can actually support: whether your compensation is clearly below, around, or clearly above the published benchmarks for your specialty — which is what matters when deciding whether to negotiate.

First confirm the comparison is fair: benchmarks are national, so adjust your expectations for academic versus private practice and for your production. If a real gap remains, the strongest negotiating position is a specific number tied to a named benchmark and your own wRVU output — not a general request for more. That per-wRVU math is exactly what the platform’s compensation tracker is built to produce.