The national benchmarks are the Doximity 2026 Physician Compensation Report (2025 earned income, nearly 23,000 full-time physician respondents) and the Medscape Physician Compensation Report 2026 (2025 earned income, 5,916 respondents), each reproduced as published. Where both report a specialty for the same year we also show their midpoint, labelled as our arithmetic; where they disagree materially or only one covers a specialty, we show that instead of inventing a number. The federal wage survey (BLS OEWS) is shown beside them on the specialty pages as a separate measure of wages, never averaged in.

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.