Pediatrician Salary in Maryland 2026,
$181,640 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Maryland figure is $181,640 a year, or $87.33 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 13.5% below the national median of $210,040. The band runs from $134,620 at the 10th percentile to $295,810 at the 90th. Maryland's combined state and county income tax, reaching 5.75% plus typically 2.25% to 3.2%, means the net gap to the national figure is wider than the gross one.

Because Baltimore's paediatric workforce is heavily academic. The metro publishes $160,160 against a statewide $181,640, and academic paediatrics consistently pays below community and private practice — teaching institutions compensate partly through protected research and teaching time and operate on published salary scales rather than production-based compensation. In a metro this dense with academic medicine, that pulls the published figure below the rest of the state, where community and private practice predominates.

A physician licence from the Maryland Board of Physicians, which issues one licence covering all physician practice with no separate paediatric credential. Board certification through the American Board of Pediatrics follows residency and is what hospital credentialing committees require. Physicians near the District, Virginia, Delaware or Pennsylvania borders should note that treating patients located in another state generally requires that state's licence, including for telemedicine.

Payer mix and procedure mix, and both are national rather than Maryland features. A large share of paediatric care is funded through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, which reimburse below commercial rates, and general paediatrics generates comparatively little procedural revenue — the work is examination, assessment, counselling and preventive care, which is reimbursed at lower rates than procedures. The result is a specialty that pays below most others despite identical training length.

Mostly outside academic medicine. The $230,700 seventy-fifth percentile and the $295,810 ninetieth generally reflect private and group practice with partnership or ownership, hospital-employed roles with production-based compensation, and departmental or service-line leadership. Subspecialty paediatrics also pays more, though most subspecialties are counted on different BLS rows rather than on this one.

That the metro's employment mix differs from the rest of the state's in a way that matters for pay. Baltimore-Columbia-Towson publishes $160,160 while Maryland statewide publishes $181,640, which means paediatric practice outside the Baltimore metro pays enough more to lift the state figure above it. The mechanism is academic concentration. Baltimore hosts an unusual density of teaching hospitals and academic paediatric programmes, and academic physician compensation is structured differently from private practice — published scales, protected non-clinical time, institutional benefits, and a mission-driven labour supply willing to accept less cash. Suburban Maryland, the Eastern Shore and the Washington-adjacent counties are more heavily community and private practice, where compensation follows productivity. Neither figure is wrong; they are measuring different kinds of paediatric job.

Structural, and worth being honest about with anyone choosing the specialty. Paediatric compensation is depressed relative to other physician specialties for reasons that do not look likely to change: a payer mix weighted toward Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program, both reimbursing below commercial rates; a clinical model built on assessment, counselling and prevention rather than procedures, which the reimbursement system rewards less; and a training pathway identical in length to better-paid specialties. The flat 0.8% national employment projection adds a second pressure, since the paediatric population is not growing and routine well-child care is increasingly delivered by nurse practitioners and physician assistants in team settings. None of that argues against choosing paediatrics — it argues for choosing it with the economics understood rather than discovered.

By separating the compensation structure from the headline number, and by pricing the tax. An academic post in Baltimore will typically pay below a community practice post elsewhere in the state — the $160,160 metro figure against the $181,640 statewide figure is exactly that — but comes with protected time, institutional benefits, teaching and research opportunity and a different career trajectory. A private or group practice position may pay toward the $230,700 seventy-fifth percentile with partnership prospects and production risk attached. On top of either, Maryland's state rate to 5.75% plus a county tax typically between 2.25% and 3.2% applies by residence, and at physician incomes that combination is material. Model annual net, including retirement contributions and benefits, before comparing two offers that look similar in gross.