Physician Assistant Salary in Atlanta, GA 2026,
$111,810 Median | BLS + Market Data

Atlanta physician assistants earn a BLS MSA median of $111,810/yr, or $53.76 an hour, across the Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell metro, with a published band of $62,230 to $172,110. That is 3.1% below the Georgia statewide median and 17.7% below the US median. The band's shape — a flat bottom and a high top — reflects two very different segments of PA employment here.

No — Atlanta sits 3.1% below the Georgia statewide median. Georgia's smaller cities and rural hospitals compete for PAs with shortage-area incentives and often pay competitively for full-time coverage, while the Atlanta metro contains a large volume of urgent-care and part-time clinic employment that pulls its blended figure down.

Supply. The metro employs physician assistants at 1.32 times the national concentration, Georgia hosts several PA programmes whose graduates want to stay, and the local outpatient and urgent-care sector absorbs them in volume at modest rates. A market that can fill roles easily does not bid wages up, and the resulting 17.7% discount is concentrated in the lower half of the band rather than spread evenly.

Operative first-assist roles in orthopaedic, cardiothoracic and general surgery, and emergency and trauma coverage at the metro's Level I centres. Those posts combine higher base pay with call, night and weekend differentials and are the route to the $172,110 top of the published band — a figure that comfortably clears the national median.

A Georgia physician assistant licence from the Georgia Composite Medical Board, requiring graduation from an ARC-PA accredited programme and current NCCPA certification. Georgia also requires the supervising-physician relationship and job description to be on file with the board, so a licence alone is not sufficient to begin practice at a new employer.

When a wage distribution's bottom two published percentiles are the same figure, it usually means a large group of workers earning at or near that level rather than a smooth taper. For Atlanta PAs that group is part-time, per-diem and urgent-care employment — real jobs, but not full-time equivalents. Anyone reading this band as a full-time career range should treat the median and above as the relevant portion and the floor as a description of the metro's part-time market.

OEWS reports wages without adjusting for hours, which is precisely why the bottom of this band sits so low. It also excludes call stipends, first-assist arrangements and productivity bonuses that are a substantial part of surgical PA income at the top of the range. The estimate blends the whole Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell MSA, from academic hospitals to exurban urgent care.

Because Georgia requires the supervising-physician relationship to be registered per employer, moving from outpatient work into a surgical or emergency subspecialty requires an employer willing to sponsor the change — friction that matters more in an oversupplied market where employers can hire experienced candidates directly. The practical implication for Atlanta PAs is that the first two years determine a great deal, and that entering through a hospital-based role, even at similar starting pay, preserves options the urgent-care route closes.