Neurologist Salary in New York 2026,
$155,990 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $155,990 a year, or $75.00 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 37.2% below the national median of $248,560. The band runs $101,060 at the 10th percentile to $377,570 at the 90th, and unusually the 25th percentile is also $155,990, the same as the median. That compression means a very large part of the New York neurology workforce is paid at essentially one salaried rate.

Buffalo-Cheektowaga at $451,510, by an enormous margin — New York-Newark-Jersey City publishes $155,990, Rochester $75,890 and Albany-Schenectady-Troy $75,800. The Buffalo figure is not a cost-of-living premium; it is what a market pays when it has genuine neurology demand and no large academic training pipeline supplying salaried labour.

Because of who is being counted. New York holds roughly 26.5% of the country's neurologists on a location quotient of 4.25 — more than four times the national employment rate. That workforce is disproportionately academic: teaching-hospital faculty, salaried health-system neurologists, and a very large resident and fellow cohort, all counted in the same occupational estimate. Academic and salaried neurology pays well below private practice everywhere, so a state whose neurology workforce is mostly academic publishes a low median. The $377,570 ninetieth percentile shows what the non-academic tail actually earns.

No. New York issues one physician licence, through the State Education Department's Office of the Professions rather than a standalone medical board. Neurology standing comes from residency and American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology certification, neither of which the state administers or requires. Nothing in the licence distinguishes a general neurologist from an epilepsy or neuromuscular subspecialist, though the pay difference between them is most of the distance from the $155,990 median to the $223,320 seventy-fifth percentile.

The published data makes an unusually strong case for looking upstate. Buffalo-Cheektowaga's $451,510 metro median against New York-Newark-Jersey City's $155,990 is the widest intra-state spread in any physician specialty in this state, and it comes with no New York City resident income tax of 3.078% to 3.876% attached. The caveat is sample size: with about 2,810 neurologists statewide the individual metro rows are thin, and the Buffalo figure should be read as a strong directional signal about market composition rather than an offer.

Because the OEWS estimate measures who is employed where, not what the work is worth. Downstate New York contains one of the densest concentrations of academic neurology in the world — teaching hospitals, faculty practices and large resident and fellow cohorts, all salaried and all inside SOC 29-1217. Western New York has real clinical demand, an ageing population and comparatively little academic supply, so neurology there is bought at private-practice and recruitment rates. The occupation is the same; the employment mix is not. This is the clearest example in the state's data of why a metro median is a statement about employers rather than about cities.

It is simultaneously the median and the 25th percentile, which is a warning that the distribution is degenerate at that point rather than a normal spread. Anyone using it as an expected salary for an established community neurologist would be badly misled — the $223,320 seventy-fifth percentile is a more realistic anchor for non-academic practice. The wage measure also excludes call pay, productivity arrangements and academic supplements. And the 4.25 location quotient means New York's sample is unusual enough that comparisons to peer states like Illinois at $237,080 or New Jersey at $222,120 are not like-for-like.

Employment sector first, and by a wide margin: leaving academic or salaried health-system practice is what separates the $155,990 median from the $377,570 ninetieth percentile. Geography second, in the specific sense that upstate and western New York markets buy neurology at rates downstate academic centres do not — Buffalo-Cheektowaga's $451,510 makes the point. Subspecialty third, with epilepsy, neuromuscular and interventional practice commanding the most. Procedural volume fourth, since EMG, EEG interpretation and infusion services carry billable value that pure cognitive neurology does not.