Physician Assistant Salary in New York 2026,
$160,880 Median | BLS Data by City

New York physician assistants earn a median $160,880 a year, $77.35 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025. Half the profession earns between $134,480 and $174,710, and the full range runs $106,440 to $201,410. The tight middle band is characteristic of a market dominated by large hospital systems paying on defined scales.

New York-Newark-Jersey City pays the most at $167,650, then Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh at $154,610, Kingston at $150,470, Binghamton at $146,120 and Utica-Rome at $140,300. What stands out is that every metro on the list clears the national median, which is not true of most occupations in New York.

New York registers physician assistants through the NYSED Office of the Professions, under the State Board for Medicine rather than a separate PA board. You complete an accredited PA programme, pass the Physician Assistant National Certifying Examination, and apply for New York registration; you must then practise under a supervising physician who assumes responsibility for your work.

No. New York requires physician assistants to practise under a supervising physician, with the physician retaining overall responsibility, and sets limits on how many PAs a physician may supervise. This is a meaningful contrast with New York's nurse practitioners, who practise without a written practice agreement once past 3,600 qualifying hours, and it is the single biggest scope difference between the two roles in this state.

Surgery and inpatient medicine at teaching hospitals. New York's academic medical centres use PAs heavily in the operating room, on surgical floors and in critical care, roles that carry call, weekend and procedural components. That is why the state's 75th percentile of $174,710 sits so far above the primary care rate, and why New York postings ask for first-assist experience so frequently.

History and hospital structure. New York's teaching hospitals adopted PAs into surgical and inpatient services early, partly in response to resident duty-hour limits, and built permanent service structures around them. The result is a location quotient of 1.9 and a labour market where a PA is a defined career role with a ladder rather than a physician-extender add-on, which supports both the pay level and the narrow spread.

PAs are paid more at the median here — $160,880 against $153,510 for nurse practitioners — but they have less scope autonomy. The gap is concentrated in surgery and procedural specialties, where New York's PA workforce is dominant. In primary care and psychiatry the two roles are much closer, and the NP's freedom from a written practice agreement is worth more than the difference.

That individual negotiation matters less in New York than the service you join. From $134,480 to $174,710 is a narrow band for a role with this much specialty variation, and it indicates that most New York PAs sit on system-wide pay grids. The lever that moves you within them is specialty and call burden, not bargaining, and moving from a medicine service to a surgical one is the clearest single step available.