Psychiatrist Salary in Massachusetts 2026,
$281,870 Median | BLS Data by City

BLS does not publish that number. The May 2025 OEWS release does not release wage estimates for SOC 29-1223 in Massachusetts, so no state percentile ladder exists. This page reports the national median of $281,870 explicitly as a national figure, with a national band from $84,060 to $446,520. Two Massachusetts metro rows were published — Springfield $311,290 and Worcester $244,190 — and employment is published at about 1,060 psychiatrists.

Because the estimates did not meet its disclosure or reliability standards. That typically happens where a small number of establishments account for much of the employment, so publishing could effectively reveal an individual employer's pay, or where the sample does not support a reliable estimate. With roughly 1,060 psychiatrists concentrated in a handful of large academic and state systems, that is unsurprising. The employment count and location quotient survive publication; the statewide wage estimates do not.

Springfield at $311,290 and Worcester at $244,190. No Boston-Cambridge-Newton row was released for this occupation. The gap between the two published metros is large and it reflects setting rather than geography — psychiatric compensation differs sharply between community mental health, state facilities, academic departments and private practice, and each metro's mix differs.

About 1,060, at a location quotient of 1.62 — over one and a half times the national rate of employment for the occupation relative to total jobs. That reflects the state's dense academic psychiatry sector, its teaching hospitals and research infrastructure, and a comparatively large public mental health system. Access to care nonetheless remains constrained, particularly for child and adolescent psychiatry.

As a national reference with the state caveat attached, and with the bottom of the national band discounted. The national 10th percentile of $84,060 reflects residents and fellows counted on the same row. A board-certified psychiatrist should reason from the national 25th percentile of $154,150 upward and treat the national 75th of $362,740 as the marker for subspecialty or established private practice. Because no Massachusetts figure is released, specialty compensation surveys and setting-specific data carry more weight here than usual.

It means BLS collected the data and withheld the wage estimates for this occupation in this state because publishing them would not meet its disclosure or reliability standards — typically because a small number of employers account for much of the employment. Suppression is a confidentiality and quality decision, not a statement that Massachusetts psychiatrists are paid unusually. What remains usable is real: the employment count of about 1,060, the location quotient of 1.62, and the two published metro rows of Springfield $311,290 and Worcester $244,190. What does not exist is any Massachusetts median, percentile ladder or hourly figure, which is why every statewide number in the tables on this page is labelled national.

Because they are measuring different mixes of psychiatric employment. Springfield at $311,290 sits above the national median while Worcester at $244,190 sits well below it, and the explanation is almost certainly setting rather than local pay levels. Psychiatric compensation varies more by employer type than in most specialties: community mental health centres and state facilities pay on public scales, academic departments compensate partly through research and teaching structures, hospital systems pay on institutional scales with call, and private practice — often operating outside insurance networks — can pay considerably more. A metro whose psychiatric workforce is weighted toward academic and community settings will publish a lower figure than one weighted toward hospital and private practice, without either being a better place to work.

That density and adequacy are different things. Massachusetts employs psychiatrists at over one and a half times the national rate, which reflects a genuine concentration of academic psychiatry, teaching hospitals and public mental health infrastructure. And yet emergency departments in the state board psychiatric patients, child and adolescent waiting lists run long, and community and addiction services struggle to fill posts. The reconciliation is that psychiatric need is high everywhere and the national training pipeline is fixed by accreditation — roughly 900 average annual US openings for the whole country — so even a well-supplied state cannot meet demand. For a psychiatrist evaluating Massachusetts, that means employment security is essentially absolute and the real questions are about setting, caseload and payer model rather than about finding work.