Sept. 4, 2025
What family medicine compensation transparency has already taught us, and what we hope to learn next
Yalda Jabbarpour, MD
Director of the Robert Graham Center
The 2025 career benchmark survey is now open. Through Nov. 3, you have a powerful opportunity to help update our unique, essential family physician career benchmark dashboard. What makes the dashboard such a big deal is that its comprehensive information about compensation and workplace satisfaction brings job transparency to our specialty.
I had a great conversation on the Inside Family Medicine podcast this month with Stacey Bartell, MD, the Academy’s medical director for career and practice strategies. Transparency was among the topics we discussed. I want to offer four significant takeaways about what we’ve recently learned about transparency—thanks to what family physicians told us two years ago—and what more and newer data could show us.
Family medicine definitely has a gender wage gap
Compensation data show us that early career women practicing family medicine report earning substantially less than early career men in the specialty. Knowing that both the men and women reporting their salaries are at the same career point, we can see that the gap is about gender, not seniority.
Early career women in family medicine make $43,500 less per year than early career men.
A 2024 study conducted by the Robert Graham Center and the American Board of Family Medicine, which corrected for variables such as work setting and number of hours worked—some family physicians do a lot of procedures; others don’t—found that early career women family physicians were earning $43,500 less than their male colleagues.
Why? We don’t know every factor, but studies done by colleagues at Harvard in internal medicine show that women physicians tend to earn less than men in a fee-for-service system. Meanwhile, we’re finding that women seem to do better in value-based care settings.
More transparency, including from your survey data, will help answer why and help the AAFP work toward one of its goals: closing that wage gap.
Transparency builds morale—especially when it starts early
We know that the gender wage gap starts early, so transparency should be an early career touchstone.
For me, that means working to mentor younger physicians and being transparent about my own career. Mentoring new physicians, talking about your experiences and being open about money and satisfaction, helps them understand their value. Your transparency and guidance here can help family physicians stave off burnout and keep them from getting stuck in the wrong role.
73% of AAFP members and 91% of new family physicians are employed.
At every career stage, through the career benchmark survey and beyond, our transparency with one another helps us find workplaces that value family medicine and practice systems that reduce administrative complexity. We know how common it is for health groups to compensate family physicians at lower rates than other specialties. Open conversations about that can help buoy our colleagues.
You can contribute to morale-building transparency by taking the survey
Almost 8,000 family physicians took the dashboard survey in 2023, including later-career physicians who aren’t likely to use the dashboard as a job-seeking tool. More of that, please. Data spanning the career arc, as well as a range of practice settings, will make the dashboard stronger and, by extension, its users.
More questions + more survey responses = even more transparency
I mentioned earlier that gender pay equity seems to improve in value-based practices. To better grasp that trend and others, we need more data. With that (and member feedback) in mind, we’ve added questions to the 2025 survey, including some meant to more precisely capture family physicians’ practice roles and areas of clinical focus. We’re also asking about participation in direct primary care.
You may feel stable in your work. You may be looking for a job. You may not ever use the dashboard. But 10 minutes of your time to answer these questions is going to help your colleagues and the specialty overall.
Transparency shows the full family medicine landscape
The first survey’s transparency let us see how much is happening for employed physicians as well as for those practicing independently or in new models. That’s morale-boosting for new physicians, but it’s empowering for us all.
Your first job is not your permanent job. You are in high demand as a family physician. The dashboard’s transparency helps you advocate for yourself as you design or improve your career. If you want to go somewhere else, if you want to change what you’re doing, the dashboard can help you figure out what next steps to consider and where, geographically, to take them.
Opportunities are out there, and transparency—information we share with one another via the survey and the dashboard—reveals them.
Disclaimer
The opinions and views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent or reflect the opinions and views of the American Academy of Family Physicians. This blog is not intended to provide medical, financial, or legal advice. All comments are moderated and will be removed if they violate our Terms of Use.