Physician Assistant Salary in Georgia 2026,
$115,390 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $115,390 a year, or $55.48 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 15.1% below the national median of $135,880. The 10th and 25th percentiles are both $62,230, then the band opens to $141,740 at the 75th and $172,050 at the 90th. Because a quarter of the sample sits on that single low figure, the median understates what a full-time Georgia PA typically earns.

Savannah at $125,500, with Athens-Clarke County effectively level at $125,460, then Macon-Bibb County $122,670, Rome $122,440 and Albany $122,170. Every one of those five exceeds the statewide median of $115,390 by at least seven thousand dollars, and none of them is the Atlanta region — which does not appear among the state's five highest-paying published metros for this occupation.

Through the Georgia Composite Medical Board, the same board that licenses physicians. You need a degree from an accredited PA programme and national certification from the NCCPA, and Georgia additionally requires a job description approved by the board that sets out the scope delegated by your supervising physician. Prescriptive authority operates within that arrangement. The board also limits how many PAs a single physician may supervise, which affects how practices can staff.

Because a quarter of the Georgia sample is clustered at that level, which happens when part-time, contingent, locum and non-clinical positions are counted in the same occupation code as full-time clinical practice. It is not an entry salary for a newly qualified physician assistant taking a full-time post in Georgia. Anyone using this page to judge a first offer should be looking at the space between that cluster and the $115,390 median, and at the metro figures, rather than at the percentile itself.

It is more prescriptive than some states. Georgia requires each physician assistant to work under a job description approved by the Composite Medical Board describing the delegated scope, rather than granting a general licensed scope of practice, and it limits how many PAs a single physician may supervise. In practice that means the terms of your board-approved job description determine what you can actually do day to day, and the supervision ratio shapes how rural and urgent care practices can staff — both worth reading carefully before accepting a post.

It means the Georgia figure is being held down by employment outside the five published metros — non-metropolitan areas, and metropolitan areas that do not rank in the top five by median, including the Atlanta region. That is a genuinely useful signal for a physician assistant deciding where to work in this state: the mid-sized markets of Savannah, Athens, Macon, Rome and Albany all pay a clear premium over the statewide figure, and several of them sit in or near the southern and central counties where Georgia's primary care access problem is most acute. Demand and pay are pointing in the same direction, which is unusual.

The lower quarter of the distribution is a single value, $62,230, which tells you the sample mixes part-time and contingent work with full-time clinical practice — so the median is depressed relative to what a full-time Georgia PA earns, and the 15.1% gap to the national median overstates the real difference. The figure also excludes call stipends, productivity bonuses and the sign-on incentives common in Georgia's rural recruitment. And a single occupation code covers primary care, emergency, surgical and specialty practice, which pay materially differently.

Full-time clinical status first, because the difference between the $62,230 cluster and the rest of the band is largely that. Specialty second: surgical first assisting, emergency medicine and procedural specialties are what the $141,740 seventy-fifth percentile and $172,050 ninetieth describe, and both exceed the national median. Location third, and in Georgia it points away from the largest market — Savannah, Athens-Clarke County, Macon-Bibb County, Rome and Albany all pay above the state figure. Lead advanced practice provider roles fourth. The board-approved job description matters too, since it sets what you are permitted to do and therefore what you can be paid for.