Salary is a big part of whether a job ultimately ends up being a good fit, so it’s important for physicians to know their worth in the job market and ask for it. Having access to salary data empowers doctors to know whether they are being compensated appropriately. We believe those practicing general surgery need salary transparency about what the average general surgeon salary is, as well as about other typical parts of the compensation package, so that they can leverage this information during contract negotiations.
We have therefore tried to provide both concrete data points as well as compile physician salary data on what doctors make, and make it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases. Using data gathered from our physician online communities, we have started this series on compensation data by specialty to assess aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
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How General Surgeon Aggregate Stats Were Determined
While we’ve previously covered the average surgeon salary, we’ve seen throughout our how much doctors make by specialty series that specialization can significantly impact average salaries. Thus, we wanted to dig deeper into the data to look at how much general surgeons in particular make.
The data for general surgeons below was compiled using data points anonymously contributed to our database between mid-2023 and mid-2024. While we typically like to have more data points before assessing aggregate statistics for a specialty, at the time of this article, we only had 93 contributions available. Smaller datasets may be less representative of the overall landscape of the specialty. As such, we remind you to access the full free doctor salary and negotiation database to compare your situation to relevant data.
Unless otherwise noted, the stats below are for full-time attending general surgeons, determined based on a full-time equivalency of an average 36+ hours worked a week. We excluded data contributed by residents and fellows.
We would love to reassess the statistics and further expand insights based upon future data. As such, we will continue to update this page as more contributions are received.
If you haven’t already, please contribute your 2024 physician salary and negotiation data to help others in your specialty.
How Much Does a General Surgeon Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing general surgeons for 2024 was $464,000, including physicians practicing general surgery part time and full time.
A single average annual salary can be misleading, as several factors affect salary. We break this number down further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time General Surgeon Salary for 2024
Over 95% of the general surgeons who have contributed to our salary and compensation database reported working full time. While we don’t have enough data points to assess a part-time salary, we did look further into trends for full-time surgeons.
The average salary for a full-time general surgeon for 2024 was $468,000. To give you an idea on the range of salaries around this average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $850,000 a year.
The lowest reported salary was $235,000 a year.
The median salary was $440,000.
How Much Surgeons Make by Specialization
We usually like to break the data down further to see how salaries differ by specialization. If you are interested in how much surgeons make by specialty, explore our related articles:
We noted that general surgeons were on the lower end of average salaries within the surgery specialty of medicine, though they did average higher than breast surgeons ($402,000) as of the time of publication of this article.
General Surgeon Salary by Gender
We compared what our female doctors averaged in earnings compared to their male counterparts.
Female general surgeons reported an average salary of $460,000. Male general surgeons reported an average 4% higher salary of $479,000.
This is a smaller gender gap than we’ve traditionally seen across different specialties we’ve covered so far. While the datasets look generally similar, we did notice that 16% of our female general surgeons reported being owners/partners in their practices, while only 5% of our male respondents were partners/owners. Below, we assess how the type of employment can factor into salaries for general surgeons.
How Much General Surgeons Make by Practice Environment
We also broke down the data by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Group private practice - $431,000
Academic hospital employee - $444,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $486,000
Overall, the majority of our general surgeons (63%) reported working at non-academic hospitals. These surgeons averaged 9% higher salaries than non-academic hospital employees and 13% more than group private practice general surgeons.
Only 16% of our current correspondents reported working in group private practices.
We usually see doctors working in private practices reporting the highest incomes among the different practice environments. Our data on the how much surgeons make article which includes subspecialists indeed shows that private practice surgeons have higher salaries on the whole. Therefore, while we’d like to propose a few other reasons why this may not be the case with the general surgery data that we have to date, we want to re-stress the importance of looking at the individual physician salary data points for apples to apples comparison and understanding that this is a relatively small sampling of the general surgeon population. Outlier data points in small datasets can skew the data, which is why we recommend comparing your situation to others that have jobs similar to yours versus just assessing the averages. You can explore our full physician salary and compensation data free of charge to find relevant specific data.
That said, there are several reasons why our current data for general surgery private practice salaries may indicate a lower average than the employed positions. First, depending on the practice focus of the outpatient practices, there may be a higher percentage of outpatient cases or small procedures that reimburse differently. Second, from our review of the data points, it seems the private practice call looks significantly different than the hospital employed physicians call, both in scope of responsibility and frequency of call. Therefore, there may be some lifestyle factors that are influencing compensation. Additionally, importantly, of our private practice respondents, 29% were in their first few years of practice, which corresponded with the lowest reported average salaries.
Lastly in this regard, there may be some error in reporting by the physicians contributing to the database, as we have noticed some numbers that may indicate the reported compensation may be just the base salary and exclusive of bonuses. Private practice surgical groups generally have a lower base salary with a significant upside potential through the bonus, so this could also be skewing the data.
Separately, while we don’t have enough data to assess an average, we can also say qualitatively for the data points we currently have for general surgeons working in government run facilities such as for the VA and at city hospitals, all the reported salaries came in below the average full-time salary reported above.
This is a trend we’ve seen across other specialties as well. We also like to remind doctors that government jobs and academic hospitals often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which can be a significant benefit in the overall compensation package, which is one of the reasons we say to consider not just the salary but the entire proposed offer.
General Surgeon Salary by Type of Employment
General surgeons working as W2 employees reported an average salary of $464,000. General surgeons who reported being a partner/owner in their practice reported a 15% higher average salary of $533,000.
This is on the lower end of the scale of salary gaps based on what we’ve seen across many of the other specialties we’ve featured so far in our how much doctors make by specialty series. We also noted a lower instance of ownership, with less than 10% of our physicians reporting being a partner or owner. As noted above, the majority of our contributing general surgeons work in hospital systems. We don’t currently have enough data to dig deeper into the private practice subset to see how salaries for owners/partners compare versus W2 employees for the private practice environment.
We only had two data points for 1099 independent contractor physicians in our salary database, so we don’t have enough data to assess an average for this employment type either. However, that may be because most of our data in this realm is reported on our separate locums pay and compensation data set. We have looked at the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors separately, if you are interested in this type of employment.
General Surgeon Salary by Location
Our general surgeons are spread around the country, so we don’t have average salaries (yet) by state, as we tend to want more data points in each location before commenting on trends. We hope to update this section soon.
Contribute your physician salary and compensation data today to see this section added in the future.
How Much General Surgeons Make by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied in 2024 by reported hours worked by our general surgeons.
36-40 hours a week average - $411,000
41-45 hours a week average - $459,000 (12% increase)
46-50 hours a week average - $513,000 (12% increase)
51-60 hours a week average - $470,000
61+ hours a week on average - $472,000 (< 1% increase)
Overall, we generally see a trend where salaries increase with the amount of hours worked. The notable difference is at 46-50 hours a week, which reported the highest average.
When looking at this subset of data, we noted that the majority of the respondents had 16+ years of experience as a surgeon. Again, we don’t have enough data to conclusively draw averages based on experience yet, but it was a trend we saw above as well that could potentially explain the difference.
When looking at how salaries changed with hours worked, we also noted that when salaries increased, it wasn’t always proportional to the amount of additional work required. Doctors working 61+ hours a week were working 15%+ additional hours a week, but made on average less than 1% more than colleagues working 51-60 hours a week.
While working more can increase your earnings potentials, remember that a poor work/life balance is a key contributor to physician burnout. Working more in your career for a 1% increase (or even 10% increase) in salary may end up costing you more in earnings potential over the life of your career if burnout causes you to want to consider other options outside of medicine.
As many surgeons reported working 61+ hours a week, below we break down how much general surgeons work on average.
How Much General Surgeons Work
Most general surgeons reported working an average 46-60 hours a week. Almost as many general surgeons reported working 61+ hours a week as reported working 36-45.
Along with the average number of hours worked a week, contributing doctors to our salary and compensation database can also note how much time they spend charting at home. Of the general surgeons who included data about how much time they spend charting, over 20% mentioned they spend an additional 5+ hours a week charting on top of the hours represented in the graph above.
If you find yourself spending a lot of time at home charting, an AI scribe may be able to dramatically decrease the amount of time you spend charting. We have a free trial and a long standing discount on an AI scribing solution in our practice resources for physicians, in case you need one!
Changes in General Surgeon Salary Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting data from our most recent salary and compensation database.
We also dug into our previous salary database we started in 2018 to get an idea of the trends in average pay for general surgeons over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at general surgeons out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old database and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2019: $360,000
2020-2021: $367,000 (2% increase)
2022-2023: $440,000 (20% increase)
2024: $468,000 (6% increase)
While salaries were relatively steady in 2020-2021 versus 2018-2019, this is a trend we’ve commonly seen in specialties with a surgical component during the COVID-19 pandemic. We do see a sharp increase for 2022-2023 as salaries for general surgeons rebounded after the pandemic, as well as a continued increase in salaries for 2024.
We hope to see this trend continue with more salary transparency in medicine for doctors.
Additional Insights into General Surgeon Compensation Packages
In addition to salary information, physicians contributing to our databases include other compensation data as well. We plan to dive further into complete compensation packages later, but for now, we have included some key insights general surgeons might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses General Surgeons Receive
51% of our general surgeons reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $32,000. Signing bonuses varied drastically, ranging from $5,000 all the way up to $110,000.
We’re starting to see a trend of rising signing bonuses across specialties. While we don’t have enough 2023 data to conclusively compare 2023 to 2024, we did notice that four of the top five signing bonuses in our current database were reported in 2024.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians, and make sure you work with a contract review attorney for physicians who can help you assess your current local market to negotiate for the best possible overall employment package.
37% of our general surgeons reported receiving a moving bonus, with an average of $12,000. Relocation bonuses ranged from $5,000 - $25,000.
Average Vacation Days General Surgeons Receive
The average number of annual vacation days general surgeons received was 25 days. The median was 24 days. While the average and median were close, reported vacation time varied anywhere from one week of vacation to eleven weeks.
Some members also noted:
They have unlimited vacation time (though this isn’t always paid time off)
Their vacation time was pooled into one paid time off bucket with their holidays, sick time, and CME days
CME Stipends for General Surgeons
75% of our general surgeons reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. Stipends ranged from $1,000 - $8,000 annually, with an average of $4,200.
Average Student Loan Debt for General Surgery
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our general surgeons who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $230,000. The higher your federal loan debt burden, the more beneficial repayment programs and loan forgiveness programs can be.
Learn more about doctor student loans. If you’ve been considering refinancing to help with the debt burden, you can also explore our student loan refinancing options.
Extra Insights from General Surgeons
As part of our salary and compensation data contributions, members of our physician online community can provide additional comments. As we compiled the data, we looked for additional insights provided by other general surgeons that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing Your General Surgeon Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in general surgery. But a reminder: remember to look at the overall picture. Salary is a key component to physician compensation, but it isn’t the only part of a well negotiated physician employment contract.
If you like where you work but don’t love the pay, consider setting aside a time to talk with management. If you are a valued part of their team, they may be willing to work with you to renegotiate your contract versus risking you leaving. Their answer may be no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Be practical in what you’re expecting and respectful in your request. Diving deeper into the salary and compensation data for physicians for comparable situations can help you get a target idea of what to try to renegotiate for.
Looking for additional career opportunities can also help. Sometimes, an employer may either not be able to or just not willing to work with you to get you to where you should be. That doesn’t mean every job will come with the same constraints. Interviewing for a few other positions can give you a feel of what the market looks like from the employer’s perspective by what employers are willing to offer. Explore open opportunities on our Physician Side Gigs job board, and explore all our physician career resources and education to help you navigate the job search process.
While we think the data above and in our database can be a great tool during the negotiation process, we almost always also recommend hiring a local contract review attorney for physicians to review your contract. They will have invaluable experience when it comes to negotiating physician contracts, including understanding what red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income as a general surgeon but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Explore more popular side gigs for surgeons.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for General Surgeons
Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries:
If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page.
Looking for a new career opportunity? Explore the Physician Side Gigs job board for current opportunities.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out our popular side gigs for surgeons.