Yes, you get paid during medical residency. Once you graduate from medical school and begin residency, you are no longer paying tuition to learn medicine. You are a physician in graduate medical education who works for a hospital, university, or healthcare system, and you receive a regular salary along with employee benefits.

For someone looking at the physician training pathway from the premed side, this can sometimes be confusing because residency is still considered training. You are learning under the supervision of attending physicians, completing required rotations, studying for boards, and gradually taking on more responsibility, but residency is also a real job. You receive paychecks, owe taxes on your income, generally receive health insurance and other benefits, and usually earn a little more each year as you advance through training.

According to the most recent national data from the Association of American Medical Colleges, the average first-year resident salary was $68,166 in 2025. That increased to $70,499 for second-year residents, $73,301 for third-year residents, and $77,593 for fourth-year residents. Individual programs can pay considerably more or less depending on the institution and location, so I would use those national numbers as a benchmark rather than assuming they are what every resident receives.

The financial transition from medical school into residency is important because it is easy to hear about physician salaries and mentally jump from graduating medical school directly to making an attending physician income. In reality, most physicians spend another three to seven years in residency, and some spend additional years in fellowship, before reaching that point. You are earning money during those years, but your income is still dramatically lower than what most fully trained attending physicians earn.

How Much Do You Get Paid During Residency?

The AAMC conducts an annual Survey of Resident/Fellow Stipends and Benefits that gives us one of the best national pictures of residency compensation. The 2025 results reported the following average annual stipends by postgraduate year:

Residency year	Average annual salary
PGY-1	$68,166
PGY-2	$70,499
PGY-3	$73,301
PGY-4	$77,593
PGY-5	$81,807
PGY-6	$84,744
PGY-7	$89,187
PGY-8	$94,215

These averages make the basic structure of residency pay fairly easy to understand. You start around the upper-$60,000 range nationally and generally receive a raise every year as you progress through training.

Your individual salary can still be very different from the national average. For example, UCLA lists a PGY-1 salary of $98,466 beginning September 1, 2026, while Charleston Area Medical Center lists a 2026 PGY-1 salary of $62,985. Mayo Clinic lists a first-year annual stipend of $75,105 for residents and fellows beginning in March 2026. Those are three legitimate residency programs with very different headline salaries.

That does not automatically mean the UCLA resident has far more disposable money. Someone earning close to $100,000 in Los Angeles can face substantially higher housing and transportation costs than someone earning closer to $63,000 in West Virginia. When you eventually compare residency programs, salary matters, but I would compare it alongside the local cost of living and the rest of the benefits package rather than automatically assuming that the program with the highest salary leaves you financially better off.

What Does PGY-1 Mean?

The abbreviation PGY means postgraduate year, referring to the number of years of graduate medical education you have completed since graduating from medical school. Your first year of residency is PGY-1, your second year is PGY-2, and the sequence continues for however long your residency and fellowship training lasts.

Your PGY-1 year is also commonly called your intern year. Someone completing a three-year internal medicine residency would generally be a PGY-1, PGY-2, and PGY-3 before graduating from residency. Someone completing a five-year general surgery residency would continue through PGY-5, while someone completing neurosurgery can remain in residency through PGY-7.

If you complete fellowship after residency, your postgraduate year usually continues rather than restarting at one. For example, an internal medicine physician who completes three years of residency and then starts a cardiology fellowship would typically begin that fellowship at the PGY-4 level.

This matters financially because residency and fellowship programs usually base salary much more heavily on PGY level than on the particular specialty you chose.

Do Residents Get a Raise Every Year?

In most programs, yes. Residency salaries are normally organized into predetermined postgraduate-year salary levels, which means a resident receives a higher salary after advancing from PGY-1 to PGY-2 and then again from PGY-2 to PGY-3.

This is somewhat different from receiving a traditional merit-based raise in another profession. You generally are not sitting down with the hospital every July and negotiating your new salary based on how well you performed that year. The institution publishes a compensation schedule, and every eligible resident at a particular postgraduate level receives the corresponding amount.

For example, Cleveland Clinic Florida lists 2026–2027 salaries of $69,106 for PGY-1, $71,470 for PGY-2, $73,994 for PGY-3, and $76,889 for PGY-4. Methodist Health System lists $71,419 for PGY-1 and $73,847 for PGY-2 during the same academic year.

Programs can also increase the entire salary schedule from one academic year to the next. This means next year’s incoming PGY-1 residents may make more than the previous year’s PGY-1 residents did, even though both groups are at the same training level.

Does Residency Salary Depend on Your Specialty?

This is one of the most important points to understand because many people assume that a neurosurgery resident must make substantially more than a pediatrics resident simply because attending neurosurgeons eventually make substantially more than attending pediatricians.

Residency generally does not work that way.

The AAMC’s 2025 survey found that 96.9% of responding institutions paid the same base stipend across specialties. In other words, a PGY-1 orthopedic surgery resident, internal medicine resident, psychiatry resident, and pediatrics resident working at the same institution will usually receive the same base salary if they are all at the same postgraduate level.

Specialty becomes much more important financially after you finish training and begin working as an attending physician. During residency, your institution and PGY year are generally much stronger predictors of your salary.

This can sometimes create confusing salary comparisons online. A survey may show that residents in one specialty have a higher average income than residents in another specialty, but part of that difference can simply reflect training length. A neurosurgery program extends through PGY-7, while family medicine usually ends after PGY-3, so there are senior neurosurgery residents earning PGY-6 and PGY-7 salaries who do not have an equivalent group in family medicine.

That does not mean the hospital is necessarily paying neurosurgeons extra because they chose neurosurgery.

Do Surgical Residents Get Paid More?

A first-year surgical resident generally does not receive a larger base salary simply because they are training to become a surgeon. If a hospital pays every PGY-1 resident $70,000, the PGY-1 general surgery resident may make the same $70,000 as a PGY-1 internal medicine, pediatrics, or psychiatry resident.

The difference becomes more visible later because surgery programs tend to be longer. A general surgery resident may still be receiving residency compensation at PGY-4 and PGY-5 after an internal medicine or family medicine physician has already finished residency and moved into either fellowship or attending practice.

That creates an important financial tradeoff when you compare specialties. Longer programs typically allow your residency salary to rise to higher PGY levels, but you are also postponing the much larger jump to attending income for additional years.

I would never choose a specialty solely because of that difference, but I do think it is worth understanding when you consider the complete financial timeline of becoming a physician.

Why Do Residents Make Less Than Attending Physicians?

Residents earn much less than attendings because residency is still supervised graduate medical education. You have graduated from medical school and earned your MD or DO degree, but you are completing the specialty-specific training required before practicing independently in your chosen field.

The amount of responsibility residents carry should not be minimized. Residents evaluate patients, make clinical decisions, write orders, perform procedures, respond to emergencies, work nights and weekends, and take care of medically complex patients. Their level of independence gradually increases as they progress through residency, but attending physicians remain responsible for supervision and for making sure residents develop the competencies required to practice independently.

After residency, the physician transitions from trainee compensation to attending compensation, and that is when specialty, productivity, practice setting, call responsibilities, geography, and other market forces begin affecting salary much more heavily.

This is why the financial timeline of medicine looks unusual compared with many professions. You can spend four years earning an undergraduate degree, another four years in medical school, and then several more years earning roughly $65,000 to $100,000 as a resident before eventually making a much larger jump in income.

Is Residency a Real Job?

Yes. Residency is both a job and an educational training program.

You are generally employed by the hospital, medical school, university, or healthcare system sponsoring your residency. You complete employee onboarding, receive paychecks, owe taxes on your income, receive employee benefits, and are expected to fulfill the clinical responsibilities assigned by the residency program.

Hospitals frequently refer to resident compensation as a stipend rather than a salary, which can make the arrangement sound less like employment than it really is. The AAMC itself calls its national report the Survey of Resident/Fellow Stipends and Benefits.

For practical purposes, if a hospital lists a $72,000 resident stipend, you can think of that as your gross annual resident salary. You are still going to receive regular taxable payroll income rather than a small educational allowance comparable with a scholarship.

How Much Is a Resident Paycheck Each Month?

Using the 2025 national PGY-1 average of $68,166, your gross monthly income would be about $5,681 before taxes and payroll deductions.

You would not actually receive that full amount in your bank account because residents pay federal taxes, Social Security, Medicare, applicable state or local income taxes, and potentially employee contributions for insurance and retirement benefits.

The AAMC provides a sample resident budget using a projected $67,400 first-year stipend and estimates approximately $4,400 per month in take-home income after the taxes included in its example. That is only a sample rather than a prediction of your specific paycheck, but it provides a much more realistic picture of what a residency salary feels like than simply dividing the annual salary by twelve.

Your actual monthly take-home pay can change considerably based on whether you live in a state with income tax, how you complete your tax withholding, your retirement contributions, health insurance elections, marital status, and other individual circumstances.

If you eventually compare residency programs financially, I would therefore compare estimated take-home income with actual local living expenses, not just compare gross annual salaries.

Do Residents Pay Taxes?

Yes. Resident salary is taxable income just like income from most other jobs.

Federal income taxes, Social Security, and Medicare can be deducted from your paycheck, along with state and local taxes where applicable. Residents may also have deductions for retirement plans, insurance, flexible spending accounts, or other employee benefits.

This matters because someone looking at a $70,000 salary for the first time can easily imagine having nearly $5,833 available every month. Your usable income is going to be lower than that once payroll deductions are taken out.

You also have to remember that your resident paycheck may arrive at the same time you are dealing with student loan payments, rent, car expenses, food, utilities, insurance, and potentially childcare or family expenses.

A resident’s gross salary can therefore sound reasonably comfortable in isolation while their actual monthly budget feels much tighter.

Is $70,000 a Good Salary During Residency?

Whether $70,000 feels comfortable depends heavily on where you live and what your personal financial situation looks like.

A single resident earning $70,000 in a relatively affordable city with modest rent and no dependents may have enough income to cover normal expenses, contribute something toward retirement, and make student loan payments. A resident earning $75,000 in Manhattan, San Francisco, or another high-cost area while supporting a family can face a dramatically different monthly budget.

This is why location-adjusted comparisons matter so much.

The range among current 2026 programs demonstrates the point clearly. Charleston Area Medical Center lists a PGY-1 base salary of $62,985, Methodist Health System lists $71,419, Mayo Clinic lists $75,105, Huntington Health lists $83,619.52, and UCLA lists $98,466 beginning in September 2026.

Those salary differences partly reflect differences among institutions and geographic markets. They do not necessarily translate directly into equivalent differences in spending money.

When you eventually make a residency rank list, I would not place a program higher simply because its salary is $5,000 more. I would want to know what apartments near the hospital actually cost, whether I need a car, what parking costs, whether health insurance is covered, how much the program provides for meals, and whether there is a housing or transportation stipend.

Do Residents Get Benefits?

Yes, and the benefits package can add meaningful value beyond the published resident salary.

The exact package varies from one institution to another, but residency programs commonly offer medical insurance, dental and vision options, life insurance, disability insurance, malpractice coverage, paid vacation, sick leave, parental leave, retirement benefits, educational funds, conference support, meal allowances, licensing reimbursement, and professional development money.

Methodist Health System, for example, currently provides residents and fellows with 20 days of paid vacation, up to 10 days of sick leave, six weeks of qualifying paid personal medical, parental, or caregiver leave, and fully paid health insurance for residents and eligible family members. Charleston Area Medical Center provides residents an annual educational stipend of $1,000 and meal allowances ranging from $1,200 to $1,600 depending on the program.

Benefits like these are one reason I would not compare residency compensation using base salary alone. If Program A pays $2,000 more but Program B pays your family health insurance, provides several thousand dollars of educational and meal benefits, and covers parking, Program B may actually have the stronger financial package.

Do Residents Get Health Insurance?

Most residents receive health insurance through their employer, although how much the institution pays toward that insurance varies.

Some hospitals cover the resident’s premium completely. Others cover most of it but require an employee contribution, particularly when adding a spouse or children. Dental and vision insurance may either be included or available at an additional cost.

UT Tyler, for example, currently lists medical and dental insurance for residents with no resident premium, while Huntington Health lists medical, dental, and vision coverage at no cost to residents with a nominal charge for family coverage.

If you have dependents by the time you apply to residency, I would look particularly carefully at family coverage. A few thousand dollars of difference in annual premiums can matter just as much as a small difference in salary.

Do Residents Get Paid Vacation?

Residents generally receive paid vacation, although scheduling that vacation is more complicated than simply choosing any week of the year you want to take off.

Residency programs have to maintain patient coverage and make sure you complete the required clinical experiences for board eligibility. Some rotations are therefore easier to take vacation during than others, and programs may ask residents to submit vacation preferences well in advance.

As one current example, University of Tennessee’s 2026–2027 resident benefit schedule includes 21 days of vacation per year and 21 days of sick leave. Methodist provides 20 days of annual paid time off.

Programs may also provide separate parental, caregiver, bereavement, educational, or conference leave. When you eventually compare programs, I would look beyond the number of vacation days and ask current residents how easy it actually is to use them.

Do Residents Work 40 Hours a Week?

Residency is generally not a traditional 40-hour-per-week job. Hours vary considerably by specialty, program, and rotation, and some weeks can be much more demanding than others.

An outpatient elective might provide a relatively predictable schedule, while an ICU, inpatient medicine, trauma surgery, or other intensive rotation can involve early mornings, overnight call, weekends, and long clinical days.

That context matters when you evaluate resident salaries. Someone earning $70,000 in a typical 40-hour office job and a resident earning $70,000 while spending many more hours in the hospital technically have the same annual salary, but the effective hourly compensation is obviously very different.

I would not focus too heavily on calculating your exact hourly resident wage because residency is both employment and specialized training, but understanding the workload helps explain why discussions about resident compensation have become increasingly prominent.

Do Residents Get Overtime Pay?

Residents generally do not receive conventional hourly overtime every time their workweek extends beyond 40 hours.

Most residency programs pay a predetermined annual stipend for the responsibilities associated with your training year rather than tracking your schedule as if you were an hourly employee receiving time-and-a-half after a certain threshold.

Individual employment contracts, union agreements, and program policies can differ, but a future resident should not assume that working a 70-hour week automatically produces a larger paycheck than working a 50-hour week.

This is one of the reasons annual salary alone does not fully describe resident compensation.

Can Residents Make Extra Money?

Some residents can earn additional income through moonlighting, which generally means performing clinical work outside their normal residency responsibilities for additional pay.

A resident might cover additional hospital shifts, work in urgent care, provide coverage at another facility, or take other physician work that is permitted by their license and program.

Moonlighting opportunities are not guaranteed. Your ability to do it can depend on your postgraduate year, residency program rules, duty-hour limitations, medical license, visa status, malpractice coverage, academic standing, specialty, and approval from your program director.

I would therefore never build your basic residency budget assuming you will supplement it with moonlighting. If the opportunity eventually becomes available and makes sense with your workload, it can provide additional income. If you need moonlighting money every month simply to pay your normal expenses, you have created a financial plan that depends on something your program may restrict or eliminate.

Do Residents Get Paid More for Moonlighting?

Moonlighting is generally paid separately from your normal residency salary, so it can meaningfully increase your income.

The rate depends on the work being performed, local physician demand, location, specialty, and the type of shift. Some moonlighting opportunities can be financially attractive, particularly for senior residents with appropriate licensing.

The tradeoff is that residency already consumes a substantial amount of time. Adding clinical shifts means giving up hours you could otherwise use for sleeping, studying, exercising, spending time with family, or simply recovering from a demanding week.

I would view moonlighting as an optional financial tool rather than an expectation of residency.

Do Residents Get Paid During Fellowship?

Yes. Most physician fellowships are paid positions, just like residency.

If you complete a three-year internal medicine residency and then begin cardiology fellowship, you do not go back to paying medical school tuition. You continue receiving graduate medical education compensation, generally based on your continuing postgraduate year.

That is why the AAMC salary data extends through PGY-8 and why some institutions publish salary schedules even further. Mayo Clinic, for example, currently publishes graduate medical education stipends through Graduate Level 10.

Fellowship does create another financial tradeoff because every year spent in fellowship is another year receiving trainee compensation instead of an attending salary. That does not make fellowship a bad financial decision, particularly when it leads to a subspecialty you genuinely want to practice, but it is part of the larger economic picture.

Do Chief Residents Make More Money?

Often, but not always.

The 2025 AAMC survey found that 71.1% of responding institutions provided higher stipends to chief residents. Among institutions that provided chiefs with a specific additional fixed amount, the average additional stipend was $5,071.

The meaning of “chief resident” can also vary by specialty. In some programs, a chief resident is simply a senior resident who takes on leadership responsibilities during their normal final year. In some internal medicine programs, physicians may complete a dedicated additional chief year after finishing the standard residency.

You therefore cannot assume every chief resident receives the same compensation arrangement.

When Do Doctors Start Getting Paid?

For most people following the traditional path to becoming a physician, residency is the first time they begin receiving a regular full-time paycheck for working as a doctor.

The usual pathway includes about four years of undergraduate education, four years of medical school, and then three to seven or more years of residency and fellowship depending on the specialty.

During college and medical school, you are generally paying for your education rather than receiving a salary simply for being enrolled. Medical students can certainly receive scholarships, grants, military support, research funding, MD/PhD stipends, or other financial assistance, but a traditional MD or DO student is not normally paid a salary for completing medical school.

Residency changes that relationship. Instead of paying tuition to the program, the program pays you while you complete supervised specialty training.

This transition is one of the reasons I think premeds should understand the financial side of medical training before they apply. When I was applying to medical school, it was natural to focus much more on getting accepted than on calculating exactly what the next decade would look like financially. Once you are actually in medical school, the distinction between four years of tuition, several years of resident income, and eventual attending compensation becomes much more concrete.

I go deeper into the expenses immediately before residency in my Medical School Tuition and Cost of Attendance: 2026–2027 Guide, including tuition, living expenses, medical school debt, and the federal loan changes that took effect in 2026.

Do You Get Paid During Medical School?

Traditional MD and DO medical students generally do not receive a salary for attending medical school.

Medical school is still an educational program for which students may have to pay tuition, mandatory fees, health insurance, housing, food, transportation, examinations, and other expenses. Some students receive enough scholarship or institutional aid to substantially reduce that cost, while others borrow heavily to cover four years of attendance.

There are important exceptions. MD/PhD programs frequently provide tuition support and living stipends, while military programs and certain scholarship programs can also cover some or all of medical school expenses.

For the typical medical student, however, the financial progression is roughly that you pay for medical school and then begin earning a salary once you enter residency.

That difference can be significant because the AAMC currently reports a median education debt of approximately $215,000 among indebted graduates in the Class of 2025. My medical school cost guide goes through those numbers in more detail if you are trying to understand how medical school debt fits into the larger physician pathway.

What Happens to Your Medical School Loans During Residency?

Residency is often the point when your student loans and your first physician paycheck finally collide.

Someone may graduate from medical school with $200,000 or more in educational debt and then begin earning somewhere around $68,000 to $75,000 as a first-year resident. Your student loan balance can therefore be several times larger than your annual resident income.

The exact repayment strategy depends on your loans, when you borrowed them, applicable federal repayment options, employer, potential Public Service Loan Forgiveness eligibility, family income, and other individual circumstances.

This is one area where I would be especially careful about relying on an old residency finance article because federal graduate and professional student loan rules changed substantially in 2026.

The important point for this article is that earning a resident salary does not make medical school debt disappear. You are finally receiving income, but you may also be beginning a multiyear loan repayment strategy while still living on trainee compensation.

What Does a Resident Budget Actually Look Like?

A reasonable resident budget looks much more like the budget of any other early-career professional than the lifestyle people sometimes associate with “doctor money.”

Your monthly expenses could include rent, utilities, groceries, transportation, insurance, student loans, phone service, internet, retirement contributions, medical expenses, and normal discretionary spending. If you have children, childcare can add another major expense.

The AAMC’s sample budget for a resident earning roughly $67,400 estimated approximately $4,400 in monthly take-home pay. Its sample then allocated $2,000 toward housing, $700 toward groceries and food, $400 toward transportation, $370 toward student loan payments, and the remainder across insurance, utilities, discretionary expenses, and modest savings.

Your numbers could look completely different, but I like the example because it demonstrates why saying “residents earn almost $70,000” does not tell the entire story. Once taxes and normal living expenses are removed, there may not be an enormous amount of excess cash every month.

Does Cost of Living Affect Residency Pay?

Residency programs in expensive markets often pay more, but salaries do not perfectly compensate for the differences in local cost of living.

UCLA’s PGY-1 salary of $98,466 beginning in September 2026 is dramatically higher than the $62,985 listed by Charleston Area Medical Center. Huntington Health in Pasadena lists a PGY-1 salary of $83,619.52 and an additional $10,000 annual housing stipend.

Those numbers become much more meaningful when you look at actual housing prices around each hospital.

A $10,000 housing stipend sounds excellent, and it certainly has value, but housing in Southern California can also be considerably more expensive than housing in many other parts of the country.

If I were comparing two residency programs financially, I would estimate realistic rent within a commute I could tolerate, add transportation and parking costs, subtract those expenses from estimated take-home pay, and then look at the remaining benefits.

That tells you considerably more than comparing $75,000 with $80,000 in isolation.

Do Residents Get Housing Stipends?

Some do, particularly at institutions located in very expensive housing markets, but housing support is far from universal.

Programs may provide a dedicated housing stipend, subsidized university housing, relocation assistance, or no housing benefit at all.

Huntington Health currently lists a $10,000 housing stipend in addition to its published residency salary. A benefit like that should absolutely be included when comparing the real compensation of two residency programs.

I would just be careful about calling that $10,000 equivalent to an extra $10,000 of take-home spending money without checking whether the benefit is taxable and how local rent compares with other cities.

Do Residents Get Free Food?

Some residency programs provide meal allowances or meals during certain shifts, while others provide little or no food benefit.

Charleston Area Medical Center currently provides annual meal allowances of either $1,200 or $1,600 depending on the residency or fellowship program.

That may sound minor compared with a $70,000 salary, but residents spend a lot of time in the hospital. If you can use $1,500 of institutional meal money throughout the year instead of buying those meals yourself, that is $1,500 that stays in your budget.

The same principle applies to parking, professional licensing, books, conferences, examinations, and moving expenses. Small benefits become meaningful when several of them are added together.

Do Residents Have to Pay for Malpractice Insurance?

Residency programs generally provide malpractice or professional liability coverage for the patient care you perform as part of your official residency duties.

You should not normally be purchasing your own standard malpractice policy simply to take care of patients within your training program.

Moonlighting is different. Your normal residency policy may not cover work performed outside your program, which is why you need to verify malpractice coverage before accepting outside clinical work.

Programs can also differ in the type of coverage they provide and whether tail coverage becomes relevant when you leave, so this is something worth reviewing in your employment documents once you actually match.

Do Residents Get Retirement Benefits?

Many residency programs provide access to retirement plans, although eligibility and employer contributions vary.

Depending on the institution, residents might have access to a 401(k), 403(b), 457 plan, pension-related benefit, or another retirement arrangement. Some programs contribute money automatically while others provide matching contributions if you save part of your paycheck.

Retirement can feel incredibly distant during residency, particularly when you are carrying medical school loans and looking forward to a future attending income. However, money contributed during your late twenties or early thirties has decades to grow.

At minimum, I would understand whether your residency offers an employer contribution or match before deciding to ignore retirement savings until you become an attending.

Is Residency Salary Negotiable?

Usually, no.

Residency programs typically publish standardized salaries based on PGY level, which means applicants are not negotiating individual salaries during residency interviews in the way an attending physician might negotiate an employment contract.

If an institution lists PGY-1 at $72,000, that is generally the salary for incoming PGY-1 residents rather than the opening offer in a negotiation.

Attending physician contracts are very different because there can be much more room to negotiate base compensation, productivity incentives, signing bonuses, relocation assistance, loan repayment, call responsibilities, paid time off, and other contract terms.

As a residency applicant, you are generally comparing predetermined compensation packages rather than negotiating one.

Does a Better Residency Program Pay More?

Not necessarily.

Residency prestige, training quality, and salary are separate issues. A famous academic medical center may pay relatively well because it operates in an expensive market, but another excellent program in a lower-cost area may publish a smaller salary.

I would certainly consider compensation when making a residency rank list, particularly if one city would be financially difficult for you or your family. However, I would place much more weight on the quality of training, program culture, clinical experience, resident support, mentorship, location, fellowship opportunities, and whether the current residents actually seem happy.

An additional few thousand dollars spread across an entire year would not persuade me to spend three to seven years in a program where I felt the training environment was significantly worse.

Are Residency Salaries Increasing?

Nominal resident salaries have been increasing over time, although those increases do not necessarily mean resident purchasing power is rising just as quickly.

The AMA’s analysis of the AAMC data notes that PGY-1 stipends increased by 2.2% in 2025 after increases of 4.6% in 2024 and 4.7% in 2023. The same analysis also noted that resident and fellow pay growth has not always kept pace with inflation.

This is another reason to be careful when comparing current residency salaries with figures you see in older articles or Reddit threads. A post saying residents make $55,000 may have been accurate when it was written but no longer reflects the national average or current salary schedules.

For this reason, I would always look at the residency program’s own current compensation page when evaluating a particular program.

How Long Do You Get Paid as a Resident?

The number of years you receive residency-level compensation depends largely on your specialty.

Family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics are generally three-year residencies, while psychiatry and obstetrics and gynecology are typically four years. General surgery and many surgical specialties extend to approximately five years, while integrated plastic surgery commonly lasts six years and neurosurgery approximately seven.

Fellowship can add another one to several years after residency.

The important financial implication is that training length affects how soon you begin earning an attending salary. A physician completing a three-year residency may start attending practice while someone in a seven-year residency is still receiving postgraduate trainee compensation.

The resident in the longer program is receiving annual raises and may eventually earn $90,000 or more as a senior resident, but an attending salary can be several times larger.

That lost attending income during additional training is part of the opportunity cost of a longer specialty pathway.

Does That Mean You Should Pick the Shortest Residency?

No. I would not choose a career you plan to practice for decades based primarily on avoiding two additional years of training.

If you genuinely want to become a neurosurgeon, choosing family medicine simply because it is four years shorter would obviously make very little sense. Likewise, completing fellowship can be financially worthwhile when it allows you to practice the area of medicine you actually want and may substantially affect your later career opportunities and compensation.

The reason to understand training length is not to let finances make the decision for you. It is to enter the decision knowing what the pathway looks like.

The financial timeline is one factor among many, alongside your interests, lifestyle preferences, type of patients you want to care for, procedures, call expectations, competitiveness, and long-term career goals.

What Should You Compare Besides Residency Salary?

When you eventually evaluate programs, I would think of the published salary as the beginning of the comparison rather than the end.

Look at health insurance, family coverage, retirement contributions, meal allowances, parking, housing stipends, educational funds, relocation assistance, licensing reimbursement, vacation, parental leave, and the actual cost of living near the hospital.

I would also talk to current residents whenever possible. A program website can tell you that residents receive a meal allowance, while a current resident can tell you whether the cafeteria is actually open when they finish a night shift. The website can say parking is available, while residents can tell you whether they pay hundreds of dollars per month for it.

Those practical details often tell you more about what your resident salary will feel like than the advertised compensation number alone.

My Perspective on Residency Pay From Medical School

When I was a premed, most of my attention was understandably focused on getting into medical school. I thought about my MCAT, research, clinical experiences, applications, secondaries, interviews, and eventually getting an acceptance.

The financial timeline beyond that point felt much less immediate.

Now that I am actually in medical school, it is much easier to see how the different stages fit together. Medical school has a real cost, residency has a real salary, fellowship can extend the number of years you remain at trainee compensation, and attending income comes after all of those stages.

That does not make me think students should choose medicine primarily for the money. I actually think the opposite is true because the amount of training and delayed income makes medicine a pretty frustrating path if the only part you are excited about is the eventual paycheck.

At the same time, I do think premeds deserve to understand the economics of the career they are pursuing. If you may spend more than a decade moving through college, medical school, residency, and fellowship, knowing when you are paying tuition, when you start receiving a paycheck, and approximately how much you will earn during each stage is simply part of making an informed decision.

The Bottom Line: Do You Get Paid During Residency?

Yes, medical residents get paid throughout residency. You are a physician in supervised graduate medical education, but you are also an employee of the hospital, university, or healthcare organization where you train.

The most recent AAMC national data reported an average salary of $68,166 for PGY-1 residents, increasing to $70,499 at PGY-2, $73,301 at PGY-3, $77,593 at PGY-4, and $81,807 at PGY-5. Individual programs can vary substantially, with current 2026 PGY-1 salaries ranging from the low-$60,000s at some programs to nearly $100,000 at others.

Your specialty usually does not determine your residency base salary nearly as much as people assume. The AAMC found that 96.9% of institutions paid the same base stipend across specialties, making your institution and PGY level much more important determinants of resident compensation.

Residents also commonly receive benefits such as health insurance, malpractice coverage, vacation, retirement plans, meal allowances, educational funds, and sometimes housing or relocation assistance. Those benefits, along with the cost of living where you train, can meaningfully change how far your residency salary actually goes.

Residency therefore represents the major financial transition between medical school and independent physician practice. You are no longer paying tuition to learn medicine, but you have also not yet reached attending-level income. You are getting paid to care for patients while completing the intensive supervised training required to practice independently in your chosen specialty.

Frequently Asked Questions About Getting Paid During Residency

Do you get paid during medical residency?

Yes. Medical residents are paid employees of the hospitals, universities, or healthcare systems where they complete graduate medical education. Residents receive a regular salary or stipend and generally receive employee benefits such as health insurance, malpractice coverage, paid leave, and retirement options.

How much do you get paid during residency?

The AAMC’s 2025 national survey reported an average PGY-1 salary of $68,166, increasing to $70,499 for PGY-2, $73,301 for PGY-3, $77,593 for PGY-4, and $81,807 for PGY-5. Individual programs can pay substantially more or less depending on location and institution.

How much does a first-year resident make?

The national average first-year, or PGY-1, resident salary was $68,166 in the AAMC’s 2025 survey. Current individual programs vary widely, with some 2026 salaries in the low-$60,000 range and others approaching $100,000 in high-cost markets.

Do you get paid during intern year?

Yes. Intern year generally refers to PGY-1, which is your first year of residency after graduating from medical school. Interns receive the same type of regular resident salary and employee benefits as other postgraduate training levels.

Do residents make more money every year?

Usually. Residency programs commonly publish a salary scale that increases with every postgraduate year. Advancing from PGY-1 to PGY-2 therefore normally results in a raise, with additional increases occurring as you progress through residency and fellowship.

Do residents get paid differently based on specialty?

Usually not. The AAMC’s 2025 survey found that 96.9% of institutions offered the same base stipend across specialties. A PGY-1 surgery resident and PGY-1 pediatrics resident at the same institution may therefore receive identical base salaries.

Do surgeons get paid more during residency?

Not necessarily. Surgical residents are generally paid according to their PGY level rather than receiving a special surgical salary. Because surgical residencies are often longer, senior surgical residents may eventually reach PGY levels that do not exist in shorter specialties, but that is different from receiving extra pay simply for choosing surgery.

Do neurosurgery residents make more than family medicine residents?

At the same institution and PGY level, they may receive exactly the same base salary. Neurosurgery lasts considerably longer than family medicine, so a neurosurgery resident can eventually receive PGY-6 or PGY-7 compensation while a family medicine physician may already have completed residency and begun earning an attending salary.

Do residents pay taxes?

Yes. Resident salaries are taxable employment income. Federal income tax, Social Security, Medicare, applicable state or local taxes, and benefit or retirement deductions can all reduce the amount that actually reaches your bank account.

How much does a resident take home each month?

The amount varies by salary, location, taxes, benefits, and individual circumstances. The AAMC has published a sample PGY-1 budget using a salary of approximately $67,400 that estimated around $4,400 per month in take-home income after the taxes included in its example.

Do residents receive health insurance?

Most residency programs provide health insurance as an employee benefit, although the premium and dependent coverage vary. Some programs fully cover the resident’s health insurance and may also subsidize or fully cover family coverage.

Do residents get paid vacation?

Yes. Residency programs generally provide paid vacation, although the number of days and rules for scheduling vacation vary. Current programs commonly offer several weeks of paid time off in addition to separate sick, parental, caregiver, or educational leave.

Do residents receive overtime pay?

Residents generally receive an annual salary or stipend rather than conventional hourly compensation with overtime after 40 hours. Individual contracts and union agreements can differ, but residents should not assume that additional clinical hours automatically increase their paycheck.

Can residents moonlight?

Some residents can moonlight for additional income, but permission depends on the residency program, PGY level, medical licensing, malpractice coverage, visa status, duty-hour limits, and program director approval. Moonlighting should therefore be treated as potential additional income rather than income you are guaranteed to receive.

Do residents get paid during fellowship?

Yes. Physician fellows generally continue receiving graduate medical education salaries after completing residency. Their compensation commonly follows the institution’s PGY salary scale, so someone entering fellowship after three residency years may receive PGY-4-level compensation.

Do chief residents get paid more?

Many do. The 2025 AAMC survey found that 71.1% of institutions provided higher stipends to chief residents, and institutions using a fixed additional amount provided an average extra stipend of $5,071.

Do residents get housing stipends?

Some programs provide housing stipends, particularly in expensive markets, but the benefit is not universal. Huntington Health currently lists a $10,000 annual housing stipend in addition to its resident salary, illustrating why total benefits should be compared alongside base pay.

Do residents get free food?

Some residency programs provide meal allowances or hospital meals during certain shifts. The benefit varies considerably between institutions, so it is worth including meal allowances when comparing the true compensation packages of different programs.

Do residents get malpractice insurance?

Residency programs generally provide malpractice coverage for clinical work performed within the scope of residency. If you moonlight outside your program, you should verify whether separate malpractice coverage is necessary.

Do residents get retirement benefits?

Many residency programs provide access to retirement plans, although employer contributions and matching policies vary. Residents should check whether their program provides an employer match or automatic contribution before deciding whether to postpone retirement savings until attending practice.

Is residency salary negotiable?

Usually not. Residency programs generally publish standardized salaries by PGY level, and individual residents do not typically negotiate their base pay. This is very different from attending physician employment contracts, where salary and other compensation can often be negotiated.

Do you get paid during medical school?

Traditional MD and DO students generally do not receive salaries simply for attending medical school. Scholarships, grants, MD/PhD stipends, military programs, and other sources of financial support can reduce or eliminate costs for some students, but residency is generally when traditional medical students begin receiving regular physician employment income.

When do doctors start making money?

For most physicians following the traditional U.S. pathway, regular physician employment income begins with residency after medical school graduation. They continue receiving residency and potentially fellowship salaries until finishing postgraduate training, after which compensation typically increases substantially at the attending level.

How long do you get paid as a resident?

Residency length depends on specialty and generally ranges from about three years for fields such as family medicine, internal medicine, and pediatrics to approximately seven years for neurosurgery. Fellowship can add additional years of paid postgraduate training.

Can a resident make $100,000 per year?

Yes, although it is still uncommon for first-year residents nationally. UCLA currently lists a PGY-1 salary of $98,466 beginning September 2026 and salaries above $100,000 at later PGY levels. Other programs and senior residents can also reach or exceed six figures depending on institution and location.

Is $70,000 enough to live on during residency?

It can be, but the answer depends heavily on cost of living, student debt, dependents, transportation, and other personal expenses. A $70,000 resident salary can stretch much further in a lower-cost city than it does in an expensive coastal market, which is why salary should always be considered together with housing costs and program benefits.

Is residency financially worth it?

Residency is generally a required part of becoming independently practicing and board-eligible in a medical specialty, so it is not simply an optional lower-paying job before attending practice. Although resident compensation is far below most attending salaries, residency provides the supervised specialty training required for the eventual transition into independent physician practice.