Cardiologist Salary in California 2026:
$185,610 Median

The published California figure is a median of $185,610 a year, $89.24 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a 25th percentile of $112,020, a 75th of $493,670 and a 90th of $532,070. That median is 62.6% below the $496,010 national figure, and the extraordinary gap between the state's lower and upper percentiles is the most important thing on this page.

San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad at $493,670, against San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont at $119,690 and the California statewide figure of $185,610. A four-fold difference between two metro rows in the same specialty is not a description of two clinical markets; it reflects which employment arrangements each metro's surveyed cardiology population sits in.

Because of what is being counted. California's surveyed cardiology employment is about 630 at a location quotient of 0.31 — far below national concentration — which means most California cardiologists are not captured as wage employees in this survey. A great deal of California cardiology is delivered through physician group and foundation arrangements whose compensation does not appear as OEWS wages, leaving the published row weighted toward academic and salaried appointments.

No. The Medical Board of California, within the Department of Consumer Affairs, issues the physician and surgeon licence, and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California licenses DOs. There is no cardiology-specific state credential. Subspecialty standing comes from the American Board of Internal Medicine's cardiovascular disease certification and its interventional and electrophysiology subspecialties.

Use the upper percentiles, not the median. The California 75th percentile of $493,670 and the 90th of $532,070 are consistent with cardiology compensation nationally and are the relevant reference for a full-time clinical or interventional offer. The published median of $185,610 reflects the composition of the surveyed population rather than the market rate for a practising California cardiologist.

California's medical employment structure. The state restricts the corporate practice of medicine, and a very large share of California physicians work through medical groups and foundation models rather than as hospital wage employees — arrangements whose compensation does not flow through the payroll records OEWS samples. The result is a surveyed cardiology population of about 630 that skews toward academic and salaried appointments, and a published median that describes that subgroup rather than the specialty.

Everything on this page rests on a thin and structurally unrepresentative sample, and this record says so rather than presenting $185,610 as what California cardiologists earn. The percentile ladder is genuine BLS output and the metro rows are genuine, but the correct reading is that the upper half of the distribution reflects the market and the lower half reflects survey coverage. Nobody should conclude that cardiology pays less in California than in the rest of the country.

In group compensation formulas rather than in salaries. California cardiologists in medical group and foundation arrangements are typically paid on productivity models with catheterisation-lab, structural heart and electrophysiology volume carrying the highest relative value, plus call stipends. That is the mechanism behind the $493,670 seventy-fifth percentile and the $532,070 ninetieth, and it is the model an incoming cardiologist should expect to be offered.