Salary is a big part of whether a job ultimately ends up being a good fit, so it’s important for physicians to know their worth in the job market and ask for it. Having access to salary data empowers doctors to know whether they are being compensated appropriately. We believe those practicing pathology need salary transparency about what the average pathologist salary is, as well as about other typical parts of the compensation package, so that they can leverage this information during contract negotiations.
We have therefore tried to provide both concrete data points as well as compile physician salary data on what doctors make, and make it available to our members for free, as opposed to having to pay for expensive databases. Using data gathered from our physician online communities, we have started this series on compensation data by specialty to assess aggregate data from our physician salary and compensation database provided by physicians across the country.
Disclaimers/Disclosures: This information is derived from our physician salary and compensation databases, but is subject to self-reporting errors and availability of relevant data points from our online communities. This information is provided for educational purposes only, and is aimed at advocating for individual physicians. It is not intended to be used for collective bargaining; please see additional disclosures and disclaimers on the physician salary data pages. Please also do your own research before making any decisions based on the information provided. We are not formal financial, legal, or tax professionals and do not provide individualized advice. You should consult these as appropriate. We highly recommend having your physician employment agreement reviewed by a physician contract review attorney to ensure you have the most up to date and relevant information for your specific situation.
Article Navigation
How Pathology Aggregate Stats Were Determined
The data for pathologists below was compiled using data points anonymously contributed to our database between mid-2023 and mid-2024. While we typically like to have more data points before assessing aggregate statistics for a specialty, at the time of this article, we only had 71 contributions available. Smaller datasets may be less representative of the overall landscape of the specialty. As such, we remind you to access the full free doctor salary and negotiation database to compare your situation to relevant data.
Unless otherwise noted, the stats below are for full-time attending pathologists, determined based on a full-time equivalency of an average 36+ hours worked a week. We excluded data contributed by residents and fellows.
We would love to reassess the statistics and further expand insights based upon future data. As such, we will continue to update this page as more contributions are received.
If you haven’t already, please contribute your 2024 physician salary and negotiation data to help others in your specialty.
How Much Does a Pathologist Make in 2024?
The average annual salary across all of our contributing pathologists for 2024 was $367,000, including physicians practicing pathology part time and full time.
A single average annual salary can be misleading, as several factors affect salary. We break this number down further to help you find more relevant comparison points.
Average Full-Time Pathologist Salary for 2024
Over 90% of the pathology doctors who have contributed to our salary and compensation database reported working full time. While we don’t have enough data points to assess a part-time salary, we did look further into trends for full-time pathologists.
The average salary for a full-time pathologist for 2024 was $370,000. To give you an idea on the range of salaries around this average, a few extra stats:
The highest reported salary was $1,200,000 a year.
The lowest reported salary was $200,000 a year.
The median salary was $320,000.
How Much Pathologists Make by Specialization
While our pathology physicians noted several different sub-specialties, we don’t currently have enough data to assess average salaries yet. In these instances, we often like to look at the data qualitatively as well for overall trends, but with the current pathology data, we didn’t have enough data points by specialization to assess any trends.
The only exception is dermatopathology, where members reported consistently higher than average earnings compared to the annual pathologist salary across all specialties. Our highest reported salary was reported by a physician in dermatopathology, though we note below that type of employment can also heavily influence this, as the highest reported salaries were from owners/partners in their practices. For dermatopathology, some members mentioned they do both pathology and dermatology, which can skew these numbers, as we saw when we covered how much dermatologists make that salaries in that specialty were higher on average.
Pathologist Salary by Gender
We compared what our female doctors averaged in earnings compared to their male counterparts.
Female pathologists reported an average salary of $377,000. Male pathologists reported an average salary of $352,000.
While we generally see a trend where male colleagues earn more within their field of medicine, for pathology, we saw the opposite, with females earning 7% more on average than males.
We noted that our female pathologists were more likely to be partners/owners in their practice (15% versus 10% for males). We also noted overall, we had far more female physicians contributing data for pathology than males, with 74% of our contributions coming from women and 15% coming from men. (11% preferred not to disclose.) These may help explain differences compared to overall trends, but we look forward to exploring the differences further with future data.
If you haven’t already, please contribute your anonymous physician salary and compensation data today.
How Much Pathologists Make by Practice Environment
We also broke down the data by where our members reported working to assess the average pay differences by practice environment.
Corporate group - $373,000
Group private practice, including dermatopathologists - $510,000
Group private practice, not including dermatopathologists - $489,000
Academic hospital employee - $276,000
Non-academic hospital employee - $368,000
We noted that pathologists in private practice averaged the highest earnings, with physicians working in group private practices earning 39% more than peers working at non-academic hospitals and 85% more than pathologists working at academic hospitals.
We also noted, however, that 21% of our practicing pathologists in group private practices specialized in dermatopathology, which can skew the data as we noted when looking at salary by specialization.
Removing data points for physicians who practice both pathology and dermatology in this subspecialty, the average salary drops to $489,000. Of these doctors, over 50% were owners/partners, which can heavily influence salary as well.
Within the hospital setting, pathologists at non-academic hospitals earned 33% more than peers at academic hospitals.
We always like to remind doctors, however, that academic hospitals often qualify for Public Student Loan Forgiveness (PSLF), which can be a significant benefit in the overall compensation package, which is one of the reasons we say to consider not just the salary but the entire proposed offer.
With larger datasets, we like to break the group practice environments down further and compare salaries in non-private equity backed practices to those of private-equity backed practices, but we don’t currently have enough data points for corporate groups or group private practices.
Pathologist Salary by Type of Employment
As noted above, salaries often vary significantly based on the type of employment.
In the dataset used, only one pathologist reported working as a 1099 independent contractor, and we did not have any contributions for pathology locums salaries, though it’s important to note that we have a separate locums pay and compensation database that we recommend for this type of employment. You can explore the statistics on locum tenens compensation for doctors separately, where there is much more data about locums work.
84% of our contributing pathologists reported working as W2 employees, with an average salary of $324,000. 14% reported being a partner/owner in their practice, with an average salary of $664,000. With our current dataset, the partners/owners earn more than double their W2 employee colleagues. We also noted that the top 4 salaries reported in pathology were by partners/owners in a practice, as were 6 of the top 8.
As we noted above, the highest salary reported, which was the only one in the 7-figure range, was for a partner/owner in dermatopathology. If we remove this dermatology crossover subspecialty, W2 employees averaged $320,000, while partners/owners averaged 87% higher at $597,000.
These stats suggest a great earnings potential if you don’t mind the administrative side of medicine that comes with being an owner/partner.
All partners/owners reported working for group private practices. When we looked at the subset of pathologists working just in this practice environment, the partners/owners reported 74% higher earnings than W2 employees who averaged $383,000. This suggests not just the importance of the practice environment, but the significance of a pathologist’s role within that environment, when assessing salaries.
Related PSG resources to explore:
Pathologist Salary by Location
Our pathologists are spread around the country, so we don’t have average salaries (yet) by state, as we tend to want more data points in each location before commenting on trends. We hope to update this section soon.
Contribute your physician salary and compensation data today to see this section added in the future.
How Much Pathologists Make by Hours Worked
Medicine can often be an “eat what you kill” industry, so we wanted to look at how average salaries varied in 2024 by reported hours worked by our pathology physicians.
36-40 hours a week average - $505,000
41-45 hours a week average - $346,000
46-50 hours a week average - $378,000
51+ hours a week average - $316,000
Interestingly in pathology, we don’t see the overall trend of working more equating higher pay. Part of this is due to the fact that several of the partners/owners in practices reported working 36-40 hours a week.
We wanted to see if this was the only factor that contributed to this trend, so we looked at just W2 employees. Surprisingly, we saw the reverse of what you might expect:
36-40 hours a week average - $377,000
41-45 hours a week average - $341,000
46-50 hours a week average - $318,000
51+ hours a week average - $297,000
We looked at the data closer and noted that many of the pathologists reporting working the most also worked for academic hospitals. Pathologists at academic hospitals made up 53% of our contributions for 51-60 hours a week, 29% of the contributions for 46-50 hours a week, and only 14% of the 36-40 hours a week group. Based on our current data, it appears that the practice environment may influence salaries more than hours worked.
How Much Pathologists Work
While we dug deeper into the data, we also assessed how much on average pathologists reported working.
The majority of pathologists work 41-50 hours a week on average, which is higher than other specialties we’ve recently covered in our how much doctors make by specialty series. We did note, however, that the majority of pathologists reported that they did not spend any additional time at home charting, while other specialties can often weekly spend 5+ hours charting at home, which can skew their average overall time spent focused on work into similar ranges.
Changes in Pathologist Salary Over Time
As noted above, the data analyzed included contributions from mid 2023 to mid 2024, reflecting data from our most recent salary and compensation database.
We also dug into our previous salary database we started in 2018 to get an idea of the trends in average pay for pathologists over time. To compare relative data, we continued to look only at pathology doctors out of residency/fellowship who worked on average 36+ hours a week. For 2023, we combined the data from the old database and the new database, cutting off entries at the transition point to help omit any overlapping or duplicate information.
2018-2019: $320,000
2020-2021: $313,000
2022-2023: $358,000
2024: $370,000
Salaries appeared stagnant from 2018-2021, (when looking at the actual data, some members mentioned they took a pay cut during the pandemic, which could account for the slight dip for 2020-2021), but we saw a 14% increase for 2022-2023. Salaries have continued to grow with a slight 3% increase for 2024. As salary transparency increases, we hope to see salaries continue to increase.
Additional Insights into Pathologist Compensation Packages
In addition to salary information, physicians contributing to our databases include other compensation data as well. We plan to dive further into complete compensation packages later, but for now, we have included some key insights pathologists might find interesting.
Sign-On and Relocation Bonuses Pathologists Receive
30% of our pathologists reported receiving a sign-on bonus, with the average amount of $28,000. This is a smaller percent than we’ve generally seen across other specialties, though the bonus amount is around average. Signing bonuses varied drastically, ranging from $10,000 all the way up to $150,000.
We’re starting to see a trend of rising signing bonuses across specialties, so we also broke down the data further and compared 2024 reported signing bonuses (average of $35,000) versus 2023 (average of $15,000). With our current dataset for pathology, reported sign-on bonuses more than doubled.
Learn more about signing bonuses for physicians, and make sure you work with a contract review attorney for physicians who can help you assess your current local market to negotiate for the best possible overall employment package.
42% of our pathology doctors reported receiving a moving bonus, with an average of $11,000. Relocation bonuses ranged from $2,000 - $30,000.
Average Vacation Days Pathologists Receive
The average number of annual vacation days pathologists received was 27 days. The median was 26 days. While the average and median were close, reported vacation time varied anywhere from two and a half weeks of vacation to ten weeks.
Some members also noted:
They have unlimited vacation time (though this isn’t always paid time off)
Their vacation time was pooled into one paid time off bucket with their sick time and CME days
They had an allotted number of vacation days, but are never able to take them all off
CME Stipends for Pathologists
79% of our pathologists reported receiving some sort of CME stipend. Stipends ranged from $1,000 - $10,000 annually, with an average of $4,000.
Average Student Loan Debt for Pathology
While student loans are not a part of compensation, student loan debt forgiveness can be a benefit with many positions. Of our pathology doctors who reported their student loan debt at graduation, the average debt was $249,000. The higher your federal loan debt burden, the more beneficial repayment programs and loan forgiveness programs can be.
Learn more about doctor student loans. If you’ve been considering refinancing to help with the debt burden, you can also explore our student loan refinancing options.
Extra Insights from Pathologists
As part of our salary and compensation data contributions, members of our physician online community can provide additional comments. As we compiled the data, we looked for additional insights provided by other pathologists that could be valuable for job selection and contract negotiations. A few that might be of use:
Increasing Your Pathologist Salary
If the information above has you questioning your current salary, there are a few different ways to increase your income in pathology. But a reminder: remember to look at the overall picture. Salary is a key component to physician compensation, but it isn’t the only part of a well negotiated physician employment contract.
If you like where you work but don’t love the pay, consider setting aside a time to talk with management. If you are a valued part of their team, they may be willing to work with you to renegotiate your contract versus risking you leaving. Their answer may be no, but it doesn’t hurt to ask. Be practical in what you’re expecting and respectful in your request. Diving deeper into the salary and compensation data for physicians for comparable situations can help you get a target idea of what to try to renegotiate for.
Looking for additional career opportunities can also help. Sometimes, an employer may either not be able to or just not willing to work with you to get you to where you should be. That doesn’t mean every job will come with the same constraints. Interviewing for a few other positions can give you a feel of what the market looks like from the employer’s perspective by what employers are willing to offer. Explore open opportunities on our Physician Side Gigs job board, and explore all our physician career resources and education to help you navigate the job search process.
While we think the data above and in our database can be a great tool during the negotiation process, we almost always also recommend hiring a local contract review attorney for physicians to review your contract. They will have invaluable experience when it comes to negotiating physician contracts, including understanding what red flags to watch out for.
If you’re looking to increase your income as a pathologist but are already at or above your market’s rate, you have options in this situation as well. Opportunities to consider include:
Help set up labs for clinical research
Second opinion review
Remote slide reading for groups
Explore more side gigs for pathologists and popular medical and non-medical side gigs for doctors for ways to increase your income.
Additional Salary and Career Resources for Pathologists
Explore our related articles and resources on doctor compensation and salaries:
If you haven’t recently, please take a few minutes to contribute! The data provided is used only for the purpose of our database to help physicians like yourself negotiate better compensation by helping provide salary transparency with relevant data. The data is completely anonymous and is only available to members of our Physician Side Gigs Facebook group. Contribution links can be found on our compensation data for physicians page.
Looking for a new career opportunity? Explore the Physician Side Gigs job board for current opportunities.
If you need guidance on negotiating your next contract for the best possible deal, check out:
Also check out our most popular medical and non-medical side gigs for doctors.