---
title: "Hospitalist"
description: "Provide inpatient care predominantly in settings such as medical wards, acute care units, intensive care units, rehabilitation centers, or emergency…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/hospitalist"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Hospitalist

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1229 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1229.02

Provide inpatient care predominantly in settings such as medical wards, acute care units, intensive care units, rehabilitation centers, or emergency rooms. Manage and coordinate patient care throughout treatment.

Also advertised as: Academic Hospitalist; Consultant Physician; Hospitalist; Hospitalist Medical Doctor (Hospitalist MD); MD (Medical Doctor); Physician.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $265,930 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $127.85/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $69,170 to $452,360, with the middle half between $102,930 and $378,770
- **Total US employment:** 342,720
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.5% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 9,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 37/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 342,720 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $69,170 |
| 25th | $102,930 |
| 50th (median) | $265,930 |
| 75th | $378,770 |
| 90th | $452,360 |
| Mean (average) | $262,040 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| ND | $454,550 | $510,966 | 740 |
| MT | $438,850 | $463,680 | 580 |
| ME | $419,410 | $432,159 | 1,340 |
| WI | $391,740 | $416,324 | 6,350 |
| MN | $367,320 | $372,456 | 5,350 |
| IN | $366,190 | $392,365 | 6,760 |
| NH | $361,300 | $346,854 | 1,000 |
| AK | $355,100 | $346,916 | 270 |
| LA | $350,920 | $397,837 | 4,740 |
| OR | $347,180 | $335,891 | 4,130 |
| VT | $343,050 | $350,201 | 440 |
| WY | $342,800 | $369,831 | 440 |
| HI | $339,290 | $308,583 | 1,830 |
| NM | $327,670 | $355,344 | 1,930 |
| KY | $327,390 | $363,125 | 3,340 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/hospitalist/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/hospitalist.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 340,700 in the 2024–2034 base year to 349,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 8,600 jobs, or +2.5%. About as fast as average: 2.5% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 9,600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Doctoral or professional degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Internship/residency.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Post-Doctoral Training | 48.0% |
| Doctoral Degree | 40.0% |
| First Professional Degree | 8.0% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 4.0% |

## What the work involves

- Diagnose, treat, or provide continuous care to hospital inpatients.
- Prescribe medications or treatment regimens to hospital inpatients.
- Order or interpret the results of tests such as laboratory tests and radiographs (x-rays).
- Admit patients for hospital stays.
- Conduct discharge planning and discharge patients.
- Write patient discharge summaries and send them to primary care physicians.
- Refer patients to medical specialists, social services, or other professionals as appropriate.
- Communicate with patients' primary care physicians upon admission, when treatment plans change, or at discharge to maintain continuity and quality of care.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Biology — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Investigative (I), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.27 |
| I — Investigative | 4.58 |
| C — Conventional | 3.90 |
| R — Realistic | 3.55 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.14 |
| A — Artistic | 1.64 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 66.2 |
| ISFJ | 65.4 |
| ESFP | 58.7 |
| ESTJ | 57.0 |
| ENFJ | 56.2 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ, ISFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [General Internal Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-internal-medicine-physician) — median $256,560
- [Emergency Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medicine-physician) — median $335,550
- [Family Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/family-medicine-physician) — median $244,180
- [Pediatrician, General](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatrician-general) — median $210,040
- [Nurse Practitioner](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nurse-practitioner) — median $132,300
- [Obstetrician and Gynecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/obstetrician-and-gynecologist) — median $292,910
- [Clinical Nurse Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-nurse-specialist) — median $97,550
- [Physician Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physician-assistant) — median $135,880
- [Registered Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/registered-nurse) — median $97,550
- [Critical Care Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/critical-care-nurse) — median $97,550

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 30.3 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/hospitalist