Pediatrician Salary in California 2026,
$214,140 Median | BLS Data by City

California paediatricians earn a median $214,140 a year, $102.95 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $125,990 and $300,500 and a full range of $102,600 to $372,460. That is 2.0% above the $210,040 national median, though every published California metro sits above the statewide figure.

Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom at $395,040, then Vallejo at $357,320, Bakersfield-Delano at $290,420, Fresno at $289,290 and San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad at $262,650. Four of the five are inland or Northern California markets, and all of them are far above the state median.

No. The Medical Board of California issues the physician and surgeon licence and the Osteopathic Medical Board of California licenses DOs; there is no paediatrics-specific state credential. Board certification comes from the American Board of Pediatrics, and subspecialty certifications in neonatology, paediatric critical care and others follow the same national route.

Because that is where the shortage is. The Central Valley and inland counties carry substantial paediatric health professional shortage designations and struggle to recruit, while the coastal metros — where paediatricians want to live and where the training programmes are — are comparatively well supplied. Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom at $395,040 and Bakersfield-Delano at $290,420 are recruitment premiums, not cost-of-living adjustments.

It shapes who your employer is. California prohibits most corporations from employing physicians directly, so paediatricians here are typically employed by physician-owned medical groups or by foundation arrangements rather than by hospitals. That affects compensation structure — group formulas and shareholder tracks rather than hospital salary bands — and it makes the pass-through entity elective tax relevant once you become a shareholder.

Because the published metros are not where most California paediatricians work. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, which together hold a large share of the state's roughly 6,680 paediatricians, are not in this table — and those are precisely the markets where academic appointments, part-time practice and community clinic work at lower pay concentrate. The statewide figure of $214,140 reflects them; the metro rows reflect where the state pays to recruit.

It spans academic and shortage-area practice under one number, and the gap between the $125,990 twenty-fifth percentile and the $300,500 seventy-fifth is enormous for a single specialty. It also sits inside California's medical group employment structure, so a portion of paediatric income here is shareholder distribution rather than wages and is captured unevenly. Read the metro rows and the upper percentiles for a recruitment benchmark, and the lower ones for academic and clinic practice.

Location and subspecialty, and location does more than most physicians expect. Taking an inland or Central Valley post is worth more here than in almost any other state — Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom's $395,040 against a statewide median of $214,140 is a very large differential for the same clinical work. Beyond that, neonatology, paediatric critical care and other subspecialties change the compensation model and are what reach the $372,460 ninetieth percentile.