Pediatrician Salary in Georgia 2026,
$149,990 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Georgia figure is $149,990 a year, or $72.11 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 28.6% below the national median of $210,040, the widest shortfall of any occupation in this unit. The band runs $87,480 at the 10th percentile, which is residency pay, to $254,560 at the 90th, with $94,640 at the 25th and $181,990 at the 75th.

Columbus at $181,990, ahead of Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell $149,990 and Augusta-Richmond County $142,980. Those are the only three Georgia metros with a published figure for this occupation. A mid-sized city leading the state capital by thirty-two thousand dollars generally indicates recruitment difficulty rather than local prosperity — smaller Georgia markets have to pay more to secure paediatric coverage.

Payer mix, principally. A large share of paediatric care is reimbursed through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program at rates well below commercial insurance, and paediatrics is also a largely non-procedural specialty — most of its work is evaluation, management and preventive care rather than the procedures that generate higher reimbursement. Those two facts together explain most of the gap to other specialties nationally, and Georgia's comparatively large Medicaid-covered child population makes the effect more pronounced here.

Yes, and they matter for this specialty in particular. Georgia operates a rural physician tax credit aimed at attracting doctors to designated underserved counties, and paediatrics is among the specialties it targets. That credit sits entirely outside the wage figures on this page, as do the recruitment premiums rural Georgia employers offer. Columbus publishing $181,990 against Atlanta's $149,990 is a market signal in the same direction — coverage outside the metropolitan core costs more to secure.

It should be read as indicative rather than precise. BLS published no Georgia employment count for this cell, and only three metros carry figures, both of which suggest a limited sample. The direction of the finding is nonetheless well supported — every peer state on this page pays above Georgia, from Kentucky's $175,690 to West Virginia's $158,470, and paediatrics is consistently the lowest-paid physician specialty nationally. The $149,990 median is a reasonable anchor; the exact percentile placements are less certain.

That BLS did not have enough reportable data to publish a Georgia employment estimate for this occupation, which usually means a thin or concentrated sample. It has a practical consequence on this page: the annual openings figure cannot be pro-rated to a Georgia share, so the 1,200 openings a year quoted here is the national total. It also means any statement about the size of Georgia's paediatric workforce would be unsupported by this release, and none is made. Wage estimates were published, and those are reported; employment was not, and that gap is stated rather than filled.

Beyond the missing employment base: this is a wage-and-salary measure in a specialty where practice ownership, productivity arrangements and quality incentive payments are meaningful parts of income, and where a large share of physicians work reduced schedules. The $87,480 10th percentile is residents rather than practising paediatricians. And the three-metro table cannot describe a state as geographically varied as Georgia — rural and small-town practice, where recruitment premiums and the state's rural physician tax credit apply, is invisible in it.

Payer mix at the practice level, more than anything an individual does — a panel weighted toward commercially insured children pays differently from one weighted toward Medicaid and CHIP, and that is largely a function of location and practice choice. Then setting, with hospital-based and subspecialty paediatrics above general outpatient practice. Then rural recruitment, since underserved Georgia counties offer premiums and the state adds a rural physician tax credit on top. And then practice ownership, which is where the $254,560 ninetieth percentile and the income above it sit.