Internal Medicine Physician Salary by State (2025 BLS Data)

General internal medicine is the broad base of adult medicine, spanning office-based primary care and the hospitalists who now staff most inpatient services. That breadth makes the internal medicine wage series one of the most useful federal benchmarks — and one of the most important to read carefully, because it averages two fairly different jobs into one number.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program (May 2025), general internal medicine physicians in the United States earn an annual mean wage of $267,200 and an annual median wage of $256,560. The median is the midpoint — half earn more, half earn less — and it is usually the safer "typical" reference because the mean gets pulled around by the highest earners.

Reading note: this BLS category blends outpatient general internists and inpatient hospitalists together. If the inpatient side is your market, our hospitalist breakdown reads this same data through a hospital-medicine lens.

The table below breaks the same May 2025 BLS OEWS dataset down by state.

Rank	State	Annual mean wage
1	Georgia	$388,060
2	Minnesota	$387,730
3	Maine	$349,150
4	Indiana	$339,500
5	Wisconsin	$334,100
6	South Dakota	$331,820
7	Washington	$327,250
8	North Dakota	$319,790
9	Idaho	$317,600
10	Alaska	$317,260
11	South Carolina	$315,380
12	GU	$305,830
13	Utah	$303,040
14	Rhode Island	$298,550
15	Alabama	$294,500
16	Oregon	$294,070
17	Colorado	$291,400
18	Vermont	$287,550
19	Ohio	$286,650
20	North Carolina	$283,840
21	Maryland	$276,280
22	Mississippi	$275,760
23	California	$273,270
24	Oklahoma	$270,930
25	Florida	$266,790
26	Missouri	$259,950
27	Texas	$254,300
28	Massachusetts	$253,080
29	Kentucky	$250,140
30	Louisiana	$238,520
31	Tennessee	$238,020
32	Arizona	$230,970
33	New Hampshire	$229,630
34	Pennsylvania	$226,950
35	Nebraska	$226,440
36	Connecticut	$216,230
37	New York	$213,360
38	Arkansas	$210,540
39	District of Columbia	$207,560
40	Michigan	$194,040
41	Illinois	$192,450
42	Iowa	$191,200
43	West Virginia	$189,160
44	New Jersey	$165,650
45	Nevada	$162,050
46	Puerto Rico	$131,450

Figures are U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS annual mean wages, May 2025 (46 states/territories with published data; BLS suppresses states with samples too small to publish, and those are omitted rather than estimated).

What moves the numbers

The outpatient/inpatient split defines the range. Hospitalist schedules with nights and weekends typically price above clinic-only internal medicine in the same market, while concierge and direct-primary-care models are rewriting outpatient economics for a subset of internists. Value-based contracts increasingly add quality- and panel-based upside to the base.

Local demand beats national averages. A state's figure reflects how hard its employers are competing for a limited pool. Shortage markets — often rural or rapidly growing — pay above trend and sweeten offers with bonuses and loan repayment the survey can't see.

Cost of living reshapes the ranking. Several states near the top of nominal-wage tables fall in real terms once housing and taxes are counted, and vice versa. Run any two states through our cost-of-living comparison before you conclude one offer is bigger.

Who employs you matters. Health-system employment, independent or democratic groups, academic medicine, and staffing arrangements each price the same specialty differently — in cash, in upside, and in risk.

See who's hiring. Browse open Internal Medicine roles on VitalPost — free for clinicians, and pay is shown on a listing whenever the employer posts it.

How to read these numbers

A few caveats keep this table useful instead of misleading.

Median first, mean second. The mean is sensitive to a small number of very high earners; the median is the midpoint and usually the better proxy for a typical offer. Read both to understand the spread in your market.

One number, many jobs. Each state figure blends employers, settings, and experience levels — a first-year attending and a 25-year veteran, a rural solo practice and a flagship academic center — into a single average. Expect your own market position to move you off the line.

The survey measures wages, not packages. Bonuses, productivity incentives, call stipends, benefits, retirement match, paid time off, and loan repayment sit outside OEWS. Evaluate offers on total value.

Self-employment is invisible here. Partnership income and 1099 arrangements are not fully captured, which is one reason real-world compensation in some markets runs above what a wage survey suggests. When you negotiate, pair this federal baseline with specialty compensation surveys and real numbers from colleagues — the BLS data tells you the neighborhood; your diligence prices the house.

References

• U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025.
• BLS OEWS: General Internal Medicine Physicians — the occupation series behind the table above.