OB-GYN Salary in Texas 2026,
$271,960 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Texas figure is $271,960 a year, or $130.75 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 7.2% below the national median of $292,910. The band runs $73,450 at the 10th percentile, which is residency pay, to $425,630 at the 90th, with $99,990 at the 25th and $359,320 at the 75th. The distribution is heavily bimodal: training and part-time practice at the bottom, established full-time obstetric practice at the top, and little between them.

Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington at $321,260 is the highest reliable metro figure, with San Antonio-New Braunfels at $271,960. The third published row, Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands at $83,050, is so far out of line with every other observation that it should not be used — with only about 1,460 OB-GYNs in the whole state, individual metro cells rest on very small samples.

It is almost certainly a small-sample artefact rather than a real wage. Texas has about 1,460 obstetrician-gynaecologists in total, so a metro-level estimate can rest on a handful of reporting establishments, and a sample weighted toward residents, fellows or part-time appointments will produce a figure like $83,050 that bears no relation to attending practice. This page reports the row because it is what BLS published, and states plainly that it should not be read as Houston's going rate. The statewide band is the sounder reference.

No. The Texas Medical Board issues one physician licence and no obstetric endorsement. Specialty standing comes from residency and American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology certification, which the state does not administer, and hospital privileging is the operative gate because obstetrics cannot be practised outside a facility. Two Texas-specific factors shape the environment: the 2003 statutory cap on non-economic damages, which lowered malpractice premiums in the highest-premium specialty in medicine, and the state's abortion statutes, which have changed the legal context of obstetric practice here.

The state employs them at 0.76 times the national rate, so in per-capita terms yes — but the sharper problem is distribution. Many rural Texas hospitals have closed their obstetric units, which concentrates delivery volume in metropolitan facilities and leaves large areas without local maternity care. About 40 openings a year statewide, pro-rated from the national figure, is a small flow against that structural picture. The recruitment challenge is less about the total number of obstetricians in Texas than about persuading them to practise outside the major metros.

Scarcity raises price only where buyers compete for supply, and in Texas obstetrics much of the employment is salaried within health systems that set compensation on internal bands rather than bidding against one another. The state's delivery volume has also concentrated into metropolitan facilities as rural units have closed, which reduces the number of independent employers competing. And the national median is pulled up by states where private obstetric practice with partnership economics is more prevalent. The result is a 7.2% gross shortfall that the absence of state income tax substantially reverses in net terms.

Sample size, above all. About 1,460 obstetricians statewide is a thin base for a percentile ladder, and the Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands cell at $83,050 demonstrates how unstable metro-level estimates become at that scale. Beyond that, this is a wage measure applied to an occupation where productivity compensation tied to deliveries and surgical volume, call stipends and partnership distributions are a large part of income and are captured inconsistently. The $73,450 10th percentile is residents, not underpaid attendings.

Delivery and surgical volume first, since obstetric income is fundamentally procedural. Then employment structure — health-system employment trades income for predictability and is more prevalent in Texas than in some states, which is part of why the median sits where it does. Then location within the state, in an unexpected direction: markets that have lost obstetric services pay recruitment premiums to restore them, while the major metros do not need to. And then call burden, which in obstetrics is heavy and is separately compensated in most Texas arrangements.