Fix broken bones, worn-out joints and torn ligaments. Thirteen years of training, for a median of $358,550 a year.
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The median pay is about $358,550 a year. Across everyone in the job it runs from about $84,170 at the lower end to about $659,290 at the upper end. The source is listed under Sources at the end of this page.
13 to 15 years after high school, on the usual route.
$160,000 to $340,000 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.
Moderate demand nationally, from government outlook data. Demand varies by region, so check your area.
Or read the whole thing here
What you earn and what it costs to get there.
Median
$358,550
Bottom tenth
$84,170
Top tenth
$659,290
The 2025 national median is $358,550 a year and the top tenth pass $659,290. The figure covers surgeons who are paid a wage. Many work in private groups and take partnership profits instead, and they are not counted.
$71,052 to $82,992 a year
Duke University Hospital pay from the first to the fifth year of residency, 2026 to 2027
Five years of residency are paid, and each hospital sets its own scale. You are also carrying medical school debt and working long hours. 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.
$530,700 a year or more
The 75th percentile of surgeons paid a wage. Partners who share group profits are not counted
The survey does not say who makes up the top quarter, and surgeons who own a share of their practice are not in it.
Roughly, all in
$160,000 to $340,000
Tuition, fees, exams and kit. Not rent, food or travel
The low end is a community college start into a public university in your own state for the bachelor's degree, about $11,000 a year, then a medical school in your own state at the cheaper end of $30,000 a year. The high end is four full years of undergraduate study plus a private medical school at $65,000 a year or more, with $3,000 to $8,000 for the admission test, applications and interviews and several thousand more for the licensing and board exams. The five to six years of residency and fellowship are paid hospital jobs, so they add no tuition, but interest builds on the loans throughout. Most teaching hospitals are nonprofits, so residency years count toward the ten years of payments that cancel federal student debt.
Roughly $160,000 to $340,000 in all, and most graduates borrow. File the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) each year. Residency salaries count toward the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program if your hospital is a nonprofit, which most teaching hospitals are.
Hospital salary
A set amount plus a bonus tied to how much work you do. Common for new graduates and academic surgeons.
Private group partnership
You buy in after a few years and share the group's profits.
Call pay
Extra money for covering nights and weekends at a trauma center. Orthopedic call is busy.
Ownership stakes
Shares in a surgery center, physical therapy clinic or imaging suite. Legal but tightly regulated.
The exact path from high school to qualified.
One of the longest training routes on this site, and one of the most competitive.
High school
Grades 11 and 12
Top grades across biology, chemistry, physics and math. You need a strong college application first.
Bachelor's degree
4 years
Any major, but you must finish the science prerequisites, keep a very high GPA and sit the medical college admission test.
Medical school
4 years
Two years of science, two years of clinical rotations, leading to an MD (doctor of medicine) or a DO (doctor of osteopathic medicine). Pass the first two national licensing exams along the way.
Orthopedic surgery residency
5 years
Five years, matched through the national residency match. Accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education. Paid, supervised, and long.
Fellowship and board certification
1 to 2 years
Most surgeons add a one-year fellowship in a subspecialty. Then the American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery certification, which is a written exam followed by an oral exam built on a list of your own cases.
Biology and chemistry
Required for every pre-medical track in the country.
Physics
Orthopedics is applied physics. Levers, loads and materials decide how a fracture is fixed.
Calculus and statistics
Both appear on the medical admission test and in reading research.
Sports, music or anything with your hands
Surgery rewards fine motor control and stamina. It also helps you understand injured athletes.
There is one national exam sequence, the United States Medical Licensing Examination, taken in three steps. Osteopathic students may sit an equivalent sequence instead. Passing it does not license you. Each state medical board issues its own license, checks your training and background, and sets renewal and continuing education rules. Working in two states means holding two licenses.
The American Board of Orthopaedic Surgery sets the education and performance standards for the specialty. Certification comes in two parts: a computer exam after residency, then an oral exam once you have practiced in one place for at least 17 months, built around the real cases you have operated on, with peer review. It is voluntary in law but hospitals and insurers expect it, so in practice it is not optional.
Things you don't need, but that help.
Sports medicine
Knees and shoulders, arthroscopic surgery, team coverage. The most popular fellowship.
Joint replacement
Hips and knees. Steady volume and an aging population.
Trauma
Broken pelvises and open fractures at a major trauma center. Nights and weekends come with it.
Hand, spine, foot and ankle, pediatrics
Each is a one-year fellowship and each is a genuinely different job afterwards.
Research
Orthopedic residency applicants are expected to have published. Start in medical school, or earlier.
Away rotations
A month working in a program you want to join is close to a long job interview.
Athletic background
Not required, but a lot of the work is athletes and the culture reflects that.
Comfort with power tools
Saws, drills and mallets are real instruments here. This is the most mechanical specialty in medicine.
Day to day, pros and cons, where you'd work.
Two or three operating days, a clinic day or two, and call. On an operating day you start around 7am and run through a list of joint replacements, scopes or fracture fixations, standing most of the day in lead aprons under imaging. Clinic days mean 30 or 40 appointments: reading scans, injecting joints, explaining recovery times, deciding who really needs surgery. Call at a trauma center means coming in overnight for hip fractures and crush injuries.
The good
The hard parts
Things people don't tell you.
To finish board certification you submit every operation you did over six months, at least 35 as the lead surgeon, verified by the hospital's records office. The board picks 12 of them, and the oral exam is built on those cases and how they turned out.
The board requires six months of the first residency year to be spent on other rotations, such as general surgery, intensive care or emergency medicine, with no single one longer than two months.
The federal outlook for this specialty is average growth from 2025 to 2035, with about 400 openings a year nationally.
Every list is built from the same numbers shown above, so you can see where this career sits next to the others.
Surgeons 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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