Pediatrician Salary in Massachusetts 2026,
$221,170 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Massachusetts figure is $221,170 a year, or $106.33 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 5.3% above the national median of $210,040. The band runs $125,170 at the 10th percentile, which is residents, to $324,950 at the 90th. Note that the 75th percentile of $323,510 and the 90th are within about fifteen hundred dollars of each other, which means the top of the distribution is thinly resolved.

Boston-Cambridge-Newton at $221,170, which is exactly the statewide median, with Worcester $213,200 and Springfield $206,490 behind. A fifteen-thousand-dollar spread is narrow for a physician specialty and reflects how much of Massachusetts paediatrics sits inside a small number of large systems with similar compensation structures.

A location quotient of 2.51 — two and a half times the national rate — comes from three things reinforcing each other. Massachusetts has academic children's hospitals that draw subspecialty referrals from across New England and beyond, so its paediatric workforce serves a catchment far larger than the state's own child population. It hosts an unusually high concentration of paediatric residency and fellowship programmes. And it retains a substantial share of those trainees. The result is the densest paediatric workforce in this tranche by a wide margin.

Generally yes, and it is a large part of why Massachusetts's premium over the national median is only 5.3% despite a very high cost of living. Academic appointments trade income for research time, teaching, subspecialty depth and institutional reputation, and Massachusetts has proportionally more of them than almost any state. The compensating advantages are real but are not wages, and a wage survey measures only wages — which is why the Boston metro figure sits exactly on the state median rather than above it.

Payer mix and the non-procedural nature of the work. A large share of paediatric care is reimbursed through Medicaid and the Children's Health Insurance Program at rates below commercial insurance, and paediatrics is largely evaluation, management and preventive care rather than the procedures that generate higher reimbursement. Massachusetts's high insurance coverage rate softens the first factor somewhat relative to other states, but the structural position of the specialty is national rather than local.

That Massachusetts is a paediatric referral centre for a region far larger than itself. Employment concentration at two and a half times the national rate cannot be explained by the state's own child population — it reflects academic children's hospitals drawing complex cases from across New England and further, and the subspecialty, research and training infrastructure that supports them. For a paediatrician the practical implication is that Massachusetts offers unusual access to subspecialty and academic careers, and correspondingly more competition for general practice positions.

The upper tail is thinly resolved — a 75th percentile of $323,510 and a 90th of $324,950 are effectively the same estimate, so the page can support the median but not the spread above it. Beyond that, this is a wage-and-salary measure in a specialty where practice ownership, productivity arrangements and quality incentive payments are meaningful, and where reduced-schedule working is common. The $125,170 10th percentile is residents rather than practising paediatricians.

Sector first, and unusually: moving from academic to community or private group practice is the largest single lever in this state, because Massachusetts paediatrics is so heavily academic and academic appointments pay below private practice. Then subspecialty, though paediatric subspecialties vary considerably among themselves. Then payer mix at the practice level, which is partly a function of location and practice choice. And then hospital-based versus outpatient work, with inpatient and emergency paediatrics carrying call and acuity premiums.