Oncologist Salary in California 2026,
$281,590 Median | BLS Data by City

The published California figure is $281,590 a year, or $135.38 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 5.9% above the national median of $265,930. It comes from SOC 29-1229, Physicians, All Other, which BLS uses for specialties it does not report separately, so it covers a mixed physician population rather than oncologists alone. For a fellowship-trained oncologist the $340,730 seventy-fifth percentile and $431,980 ninetieth are the more realistic reference points.

Santa Rosa-Petaluma at $421,490, and the whole top of the table is non-metropolitan: Salinas $384,990, El Centro $370,290, Chico $334,980 and Modesto $323,580. Every one of them pays above the statewide median of $281,590. California's coastal cities do not appear at the top of this table because they do not need to pay a premium to attract physicians.

Because recruitment is genuinely hard and the alternative is no service at all. El Centro, Chico and much of northern and inland California compete for physicians against coastal metros that offer better amenities, more academic affiliation and shorter distances to family and colleagues. The premium — Santa Rosa-Petaluma $421,490 against a statewide $281,590 — is what closes that gap. California's slow licensure-by-endorsement process at the Medical Board of California makes recruitment from other states harder still, which reinforces the effect.

No. The Medical Board of California issues a single physician and surgeon licence with no oncology endorsement. Specialty standing comes from an internal medicine residency plus a haematology-oncology fellowship, or a radiation oncology residency, and board certification from the American Board of Internal Medicine or the American Board of Radiology — none of which the state administers. Hospital privileging and payer credentialing are the practical gates for oncology practice, and both run on the board certification rather than on anything California issues.

It is a useful reference and a poor precision instrument. SOC 29-1229 is a residual category and its population spans specialties with quite different compensation, so the $281,590 median describes the category rather than the specialty. Oncology's training length and procedural or infusion revenue place fellowship-trained physicians well up the band, which is why the $340,730 and $431,980 figures matter more. The $80,590 10th percentile, meanwhile, is residents and fellows and should never be read as attending pay.

Because California has fewer physicians per capita in this residual category than the country does, which is consistent with a state that has long had physician access problems outside its coastal metros. Some of it is measurement — where a specialty is broken out separately it leaves this row — but a substantial part is real. Medical school and residency capacity has not kept pace with population, and the Medical Board of California's licensure-by-endorsement process is slower than many states', which raises the friction for physicians moving in. The rural metro premiums on this page are the market's response.

Two caveats, both large. The category is residual, so it mixes specialties, and the median is not an oncology median. And the measure is wage and salary income, which in oncology omits a great deal: productivity compensation tied to infusion and treatment volume, partnership distributions in private practice, and the economics of practice-owned infusion services are all structured in ways a wage survey captures poorly. The $431,980 ninetieth percentile should be read as where the published data stops rather than where California oncology income stops.

Location, and unusually it moves in the opposite direction to the rest of the state's economy — the further from a coastal metro, the higher the recruitment premium, with Santa Rosa-Petaluma at $421,490 and El Centro at $370,290 illustrating the point. Then employment structure: academic and salaried health-system appointments trade income for research time and predictability, while private and health-system practice with productivity components pays more. Then practice mix, since infusion volume, clinical trial participation and radiation oncology economics differ substantially. And then the tax question, which at these incomes is large enough to belong on the list.