Anesthesiologist Salary in Virginia 2026,
$488,310 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Virginia figure is $488,310 a year, or $234.77 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with quartiles at $261,040 and $504,200 and a published band from $42,100 at the 10th percentile to $507,500 at the 90th. That is 24.7% above the national median of $391,490. The row is SOC 29-1211, an exact match — but the extreme tails of this distribution should be treated as unreliable, for the reasons set out below.

It cannot be a practising anesthesiologist's wage — $42,100 is far below residency compensation, let alone attending pay. The most plausible explanation is a small-sample artefact in a state cell with a limited number of observations, possibly reflecting partial-year or unusual employment records. This site publishes what BLS released, and flags it: the honest reading is to disregard the bottom decile of this band and work from the $261,040 twenty-fifth percentile upward.

Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk at $500,990, with Roanoke and the Virginia statewide all-areas row both published at $488,310. The metro coverage for this occupation is thin, which is itself a signal about sample size. Note that Northern Virginia does not appear — the Washington metropolitan area is published as its own multi-state metro and Virginia's largest labour market therefore has no row of its own on this page.

Yes. Virginia participates in the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact, which provides an expedited route to licensure for board-certified physicians already licensed in another participating state. It is not a multistate licence — the Virginia Board of Medicine still issues a Virginia licence — but the process is faster than a standard application. Hospital credentialing follows and is usually the longer part of the timeline.

From the middle outward. The $261,040 twenty-fifth percentile, the $488,310 median and the Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk figure of $500,990 are credible and place Virginia among the better-paying states for the specialty. The $42,100 tenth percentile and the near-identical $504,200 and $507,500 upper percentiles are sampling artefacts and should not be used in a negotiation in either direction.

Because concealing it would be worse. OEWS released a 10th percentile of $42,100 for this Virginia cell, and any site reproducing the band without comment would be presenting a number that is straightforwardly impossible as an anesthesiologist wage. The alternative — silently trimming the distribution — would mean the reader could not check the source. So the figure is shown, the reason it cannot be right is explained, and the usable part of the band is identified. Small state cells for high-earning specialties produce this kind of artefact regularly, and a reader who understands why will read every physician page on this site more carefully.

That it pays well and that the employer base is unusually broad. A $488,310 median places Virginia behind only Washington and Minnesota in its peer group and well above the national figure, and Virginia Beach-Chesapeake-Norfolk at $500,990 is a strong metro figure. The employer mix includes academic medical centres, private practice groups, health systems and a substantial military and veteran healthcare sector — the last of which most states do not have at Virginia's scale, and which offers a different practice pattern and compensation structure from the private market.

That the state median may be capturing a market the metro table cannot show. The Washington metropolitan area is published as a multi-state metro rather than as a Virginia one, so the anaesthesiology employment in Arlington, Alexandria, Fairfax and Loudoun — a large, well-resourced healthcare market — contributes to Virginia's state figure without appearing in any Virginia metro row. That is a general feature of every page in this Virginia series, and it is the single most important interpretive caution for anyone using Virginia wage data.