Somewhere in Sunnyvale, California, an urgent care physician is being offered up to $395,000 a year to evaluate sore throats, sprained ankles, and the occasional patient who Googled their symptoms on the drive over. Somewhere in New York, another urgent care physician is being offered $208,000 to do roughly the same thing. Both listings are real. Both are active. Both appear in the same 122-listing national dataset PhysEmp pulled on June 1, 2026, covering more than 30 states and a salary range so wide it could double as a Rorschach test. The thesis is simple: urgent care pays well, pays unevenly, and pays almost nothing to tell you about it upfront.
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The Urgent Care Physician Job Market at a Glance

Total listings: 122
Listings with disclosed salary: 18
Full national salary range: $208,000 to $400,000
National average range: $292,644 to $320,653

The spread is the story. A $192,000 gap between the floor and ceiling means two physicians with identical board certifications can earn nearly double or half of each other depending almost entirely on zip code. The average range is comfortable but not extravagant — urgent care is not, and has never claimed to be, the specialty you choose to buy a second home in Aspen (unless you take the Colorado job, in which case, maybe).

States represented in the dataset: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, Arkansas.

Thirty-four states. Eighteen salaries. Do the math on that ratio and brace yourself.
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How States Stack Up

Overperformers

Colorado leads the country with an average range of $345,000 to $365,000, which is impressive for a state where the commute may involve elk.

Massachusetts follows at $343,200 to $353,600, proving Boston can pay for clinical work and not just academic prestige.

Kansas posts $330,000 to $355,000, which is the kind of number that makes coastal physicians quietly open a map.

Nevada averages $325,000 to $336,000, presumably funded by tourists who overdid it.

California averages $309,667 to $350,333, anchored by the Sunnyvale outlier.

Near-average

Georgia sits at $300,000 to $325,000 — a textbook benchmark market.

Kentucky lands at $280,800 to $305,760, straddling the national floor.

Florida posts $280,800 to $291,200, slightly below average despite leading the Sun Belt in volume.

Underperformers

Texas comes in at a flat $220,000, well below the national floor (and, given Texas’s volume of urgent care patients, conspicuously so).

New York’s range of $208,000 to $312,000 contains the absolute national low.

Ohio averages $265,000 to $280,000.

Minnesota shows a flat $270,000, which is to say: no upside disclosed.

Volume leaders: Missouri (13), Oregon (11), Florida (8), North Carolina (8), Wisconsin (8). Of those five, exactly one — Florida — disclosed any salary data. And Florida pays below average.
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What This Means If You’re a Physician

If your priority is maximum compensation: Look at Sunnyvale, California, where the highest-paying listing in the country offers $385,000 to $395,000. Then look at Sunnyvale rent, and recalibrate. Colorado and Kansas offer comparable money with materially lower cost-of-living drag. Iowa quietly produced a listing spanning $300,000 to $400,000 — the ceiling of the entire dataset — so do not sleep on the Midwest.

If your priority is maximum optionality: Missouri (13), Oregon (11), Florida, North Carolina, and Wisconsin (8 each) offer the most listings. You will have choices. You will not, however, have salary numbers until you pick up the phone.

If your priority is balance: Georgia and Kentucky offer near-average pay in markets where a mortgage does not require a co-signer named “venture capital.” Solid, unsexy, durable.
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What This Means If You’re a Recruiter

Salary transparency rate: 18 of 122 listings, or roughly 14.75%. That is not a rate. That is a rounding error wearing a lanyard. Candidates with a phone and ten minutes can benchmark every disclosed range in the country, then ask why yours is not among them. The pipeline implication is direct: physicians self-select into transparent markets first and call the opaque ones second, if at all.

The volume-pay misalignment is acute. Missouri, Oregon, Wisconsin, and North Carolina are recruiting hardest and disclosing least. If you operate in those states, compensation cannot be your lead — schedule structure, patient volume caps, partnership track, and geographic lifestyle will have to carry the pitch. Or just publish your numbers.
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What’s Driving the Numbers

Scope and geography command the premium, not leadership: The top end of this market is not paying for medical directorships or system roles. It is paying for physicians willing to work in high-cost or high-demand metros (Sunnyvale) or staff-thin regions (rural Iowa, Kansas). Urgent care compensation rewards where you sit, not what you supervise.

Part-time and locum roles may distort the floor: A $208,000 New York listing and a $220,000 Texas listing read as low for a reason — they may reflect reduced FTE schedules, hourly conversions, or locum arrangements bundled into the same dataset as full-time roles. Flat single-number “ranges” like Minnesota’s $270,000 and Texas’s $220,000 are the tell.

Underserved markets price in scarcity: Kansas at $330,000 to $355,000 and rural Iowa reaching $400,000 are not paying coastal premiums for fun. They are paying for the small number of physicians willing to live there. Scarcity, as always, is the most reliable compensation driver in American medicine.

The volume-pay relationship is broken: Missouri leads the country in listings and discloses nothing. The highest-paying state, Colorado, has two listings. High demand does not translate to high pay in this specialty — it translates to high opacity. Recruiters in volume states are competing on everything except the number candidates actually want to see.

The Bottom Line

Urgent care in 2026 is a specialty where the work is broadly similar across states, the pay is wildly not, and the employers most desperate to hire are the ones least willing to say what they will pay. The money is real — up to $400,000 real — but it lives in specific places, often the ones with the fewest job listings. Candidates who chase volume will find opportunity. Candidates who chase compensation will find airports.

Urgent care pays you to triage other people’s emergencies, but finding the right job is its own diagnostic workup.
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Salary data based on 18 listings with disclosed compensation. Figures may reflect part-time or specialized roles. This report is informational and should not replace professional judgment or financial planning.