---
title: "Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist"
description: "Obstetrician who cares for high-risk pregnancies, managing maternal illness and diagnosing and treating problems in the fetus before birth."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/maternal-fetal-medicine-specialist"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Maternal-Fetal Medicine Specialist

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1218 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1218.00

Obstetrician who cares for high-risk pregnancies, managing maternal illness and diagnosing and treating problems in the fetus before birth.

Also advertised as: Perinatologist; MFM Physician; High-Risk Pregnancy Doctor; Maternal-Fetal Medicine Physician.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $292,910 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $140.82/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $94,680 to $437,300, with the middle half between $179,810 and $369,390
- **Total US employment:** 21,260
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +1.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 50/100 — 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 21,260 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $94,680 |
| 25th | $179,810 |
| 50th (median) | $292,910 |
| 75th | $369,390 |
| 90th | $437,300 |
| Mean (average) | $279,040 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| UT | $437,170 | $442,193 | 200 |
| AK | $421,450 | $411,737 | 50 |
| VT | $418,760 | $427,489 | 90 |
| ND | $414,060 | $465,450 | 70 |
| LA | $404,550 | $458,637 | 80 |
| OR | $395,340 | $382,485 | 270 |
| ME | $379,930 | $391,479 | 100 |
| OK | $370,260 | $421,502 | 60 |
| AZ | $369,720 | $367,234 | 130 |
| IA | $356,020 | $405,665 | 180 |
| TN | $354,580 | $385,958 | 360 |
| GA | $354,000 | $367,628 | 350 |
| IN | $351,990 | $377,150 | 430 |
| NY | $348,800 | $323,199 | 2,750 |
| NH | $348,140 | $334,220 | 140 |

31 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 46 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/maternal-fetal-medicine-specialist/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/maternal-fetal-medicine-specialist.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 22,800 in the 2025–2035 base year to 23,200 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 400 jobs, or +1.7%. Slower than average: 1.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 500 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## 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 | 74.0% |
| Doctoral Degree | 22.5% |
| First Professional Degree | 3.5% |

## What the work involves

- Manage pregnancies complicated by diabetes, hypertension and other maternal illness
- Perform and interpret detailed fetal ultrasound and echocardiography
- Diagnose birth defects and genetic conditions before birth
- Perform amniocentesis and other prenatal procedures
- Treat preeclampsia, preterm labor and placental disorders
- Plan delivery timing and location with obstetricians and neonatologists
- Counsel families after abnormal prenatal findings

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Science — importance 3.8 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.

- Complex Problem Solving — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 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 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Problem Sensitivity — importance 5.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.5 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 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 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 Investigative (I), Social (S), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| I — Investigative | 5.65 |
| S — Social | 5.45 |
| R — Realistic | 4.65 |
| C — Conventional | 3.72 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.74 |
| A — Artistic | 1.45 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ISTJ | 65.6 |
| ISFJ | 64.4 |
| ISTP | 62.2 |
| ISFP | 58.3 |
| ESTJ | 56.7 |

Best-fitting types: ISTJ, ISFJ, ISTP.

## Related occupations

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

- [Obstetrician and Gynecologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/obstetrician-and-gynecologist) — median $292,910
- [Pediatric Surgeon](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatric-surgeon) — median $559,030
- [General Internal Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/general-internal-medicine-physician) — median $256,560
- [Cardiologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/cardiologist) — median $496,010
- [Pediatrician, General](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatrician-general) — median $210,040
- [Family Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/family-medicine-physician) — median $244,180
- [Urologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/urologist) — median $265,930
- [Emergency Medicine Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/emergency-medicine-physician) — median $335,550
- [Orthopedic Surgeon, Except Pediatric](https://nuecareer.com/careers/orthopedic-surgeon) — median $358,550
- [Neurologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/neurologist) — median $248,560

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 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, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **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 31.0 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/maternal-fetal-medicine-specialist