Delivers babies and treats everything from fertility to cancer of the reproductive organs. Twelve years of training, surgery, clinic, and births at 3am.
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The median pay is about $292,910 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $94,680 at the lower end to about $437,300 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
12 to 13 years after high school, on the usual route.
$195,000 to $330,000 all in for tuition, fees, exams and kit. Living costs are not counted.
Yes. It is a regulated job, so you need a license or registration before you can work.
Limited demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
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What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$292,910
Bottom tenth
$94,680
Top tenth
$437,300
The national median is $292,910 a year, and the bottom tenth earn $94,680 or less. This federal survey counts physicians who are paid as employees. Those in private partnerships are not counted at all.
$71,052 a year
First-year resident pay at Duke University Hospital, 2026 to 2027
It rises each year, to $79,908 in the fourth year. Each hospital sets its own scale. Residents can work up to 80 hours a week, while the interest on medical school loans keeps building. Nationally, the AAMC (Association of American Medical Colleges) survey of 345 teaching hospitals puts the average first-year stipend at $68,166 as of July 1, 2025, and about $81,807 in the fifth year. Read from the AAMC's data, downloaded in a browser with Claude in Chrome on 6 November 2026, because aamc.org refuses our checker.
Malpractice insurance
Paid by your employer, or by you if you own the practice
Obstetrics insurance is costly because a claim about a birth can be brought many years later, while the child is still a minor. Employed physicians have it paid for them. If you own a practice, you pay it yourself and it is a large number.
Roughly, all in
$195,000 to $330,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a community college start, a bachelor's degree finished at a public university in your own state, and a state medical school at about $40,000 a year. The high end is four full years of undergraduate study plus a private medical school closer to $65,000 a year. Both include the medical school admission test, $3,000 or more in applications and interview travel, the three steps of the national licensing exam ($695, $695 and $955), and the written and oral board exams after residency. Residency is paid, but most graduates borrow and leave with large debts, and nonprofit hospital work can cancel the balance after ten years of payments.
Most graduates borrow, and the debt is large. Working for a nonprofit hospital or a university makes you eligible for the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program, which clears the balance after ten years of payments.
Malpractice insurance paid
Standard in employed jobs, and in this specialty that matters.
Signing bonuses and loan repayment
Common outside big cities, because many rural hospitals have closed their maternity units for lack of staff.
Two careers in one
You operate and you run a clinic. If you get tired of one side, you can shift the balance.
Long patient relationships
You look after people for decades, and often deliver the babies of women you first met as teenagers.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
Twelve years after high school before you practice on your own.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Biology, chemistry, physics and math, with the grades for a competitive college.
Bachelor's degree
4 years
Any major, as long as you finish the pre-medical science courses and sit the MCAT (Medical College Admission Test).
Medical school
4 years
Two years of science, two years of hospital rotations. You graduate a Doctor of Medicine or a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine.
Residency
4 years
Four years of obstetrics and gynecology: deliveries, operating room, clinic, emergencies. Paid and supervised throughout.
Board certification
After residency
The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology requires written and oral examinations, and the oral one comes after you have been in practice.
Fellowship, if you want one
3 years
Maternal-fetal medicine, fertility, gynecologic oncology or urogynecology. Optional, and each adds three years.
Biology
Reproduction, hormones and development. The whole specialty is built on it.
Chemistry
Required for every pre-medical program, and hormone medicine is chemistry.
Physics
Ultrasound is physics, and you will use it in almost every appointment.
Anything that trains your hands
This is a surgical specialty. Fine motor skill matters and it can be practiced.
Every state licenses physicians through its own medical board, and you hold a separate license in each state where you practice. The exams are national: the three steps of the United States Medical Licensing Examination during medical school and residency, then certification by the American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Certification is technically voluntary. In practice most hospitals expect it, or expect you to earn it within a few years, before they let you deliver babies there. Be aware too that state law around reproductive care now varies enormously, and it shapes what this job looks like where you live.
Public medical schools
Much cheaper for in-state residents, and many favor in-state applicants heavily.
Private medical schools
No state preference, considerably higher tuition.
Osteopathic schools
Award a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine degree and train in the same residency programs.
Residency matching
Positions are assigned by a national computer match. You rank programs, they rank you, and an algorithm decides.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Maternal-fetal medicine
High risk pregnancy. Three more years, and the person everyone calls when something is wrong.
Gynecologic oncology
Cancer surgery and chemotherapy. The most surgical route out of this specialty.
Reproductive endocrinology and infertility
Fertility treatment. Clinic based, with predictable hours.
Urogynecology
Pelvic floor surgery, mostly in older patients. Steady work with no overnight deliveries.
Ability to function without sleep
Babies arrive at 3am and there is no version of this job where that is not true.
Calm in an emergency
Obstetrics goes from routine to life threatening in under a minute, more than almost any other field.
Comfort with hard conversations
Miscarriage, infertility and cancer are all part of an ordinary week.
Research during medical school
Helps for competitive fellowships and for academic jobs later.
A lot of obstetrician-gynecologists eventually drop the obstetrics half and practice gynecology only. The hours become predictable, the malpractice premium falls, and the work becomes clinic and scheduled surgery. It is a normal mid-career move rather than a retreat, and it is worth knowing early that the specialty has that exit built into it. The opposite also exists: some doctors do almost nothing but deliveries, working shifts on a labor ward the way an emergency physician works an emergency department.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Rounds at 6:30am on the women who delivered overnight. Then the operating room for a scheduled hysterectomy, gown on by 7:45. Clinic from noon: a first pregnancy scan, a contraception visit, a woman with bleeding who is frightened about what it means. At 4pm someone on the labor ward goes from normal to an emergency cesarean and you are in the operating room in eight minutes. You finish notes at 7pm, and if you are on call you go back in at 2am for a delivery that will not wait.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
The American Board of Obstetrics and Gynecology has been certifying physicians for over 99 years and lists more than 38,000 current holders of its certificate.
Certification is not finished when residency ends. You must spend the year before the oral exam in unsupervised practice, and you hand in a list of the patients you actually treated, which the board can audit.
Federal projections expect slower than average growth for this job from 2025 to 2035, with about 500 openings a year across the whole country.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Doctors first, then the rest of the field. See every career in health.
Last checked November 2026. Pay figures are typical full-time annual amounts in United States dollars, based on Bureau of Labor Statistics wage data and published pay scales. They vary by state, employer and experience. Tuition is for in-state students at public schools unless the card says otherwise. How every figure on this site is sourced and checked.
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