PHYSICIAN JOB MARKET ANALYSIS REPORT: INFECTIOUS DISEASE
(PhysEmp Market Intelligence | physemp.com)
THE HOOK
A specialty that spent the last several years on every cable news chyron in America currently has 41 open physician listings nationwide. Forty-one. For the entire country. The pandemic minted Infectious Disease as the most publicly visible specialty in medicine, and the job board has responded with the energy of a polite golf clap. Of those 41 listings, only 10 disclosed salary, and the entire national pay range fits inside a tidy $100,000 band — from $200,000 to $300,000. The thesis: Infectious Disease is a small, geographically scattered, modestly compensated market where the ceiling lives in Saint Joseph, Missouri (a sentence that surprises no one more than the people who wrote it).
THE NATIONAL SNAPSHOT
Total listings: 41
Listings with salary data: 10
Full salary range: $200,000 – $300,000
National average range: $238,000 – $259,500
States represented: 21
The spread is narrow by physician standards. A $100,000 gap between floor and ceiling is the kind of compression you see in salaried hospital specialties without procedural upside, and Infectious Disease — cerebral, consult-heavy, RVU-light — fits the profile precisely.
The 21 states with listings are Missouri, New York, Michigan, West Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, Ohio, Maryland, Kentucky, North Dakota, Indiana, Tennessee, Pennsylvania, Alabama, California, New Mexico, Massachusetts, Florida, Wisconsin, Illinois, and Texas.
Three of those states disclosed salary. The other eighteen did not. Which means this market is being analyzed largely on the strength of New York, with Missouri and Michigan as supporting characters.
STATE BY STATE
Overperformers:
Missouri — A single Saint Joseph listing posts a flat $300,000, the national ceiling, from a state most coastal physicians would struggle to locate on a map without help.
Michigan — One listing at $225,000 – $250,000 lands solidly in the upper half of the disclosed band.
Near-average:
New York — Eight salary listings averaging $231,875 – $255,625, which is roughly the national average with a slight discount on the high end.
Underperformers:
New York (again) — The same state is also the bottom of the disclosed market, home to the $200,000 national floor. High volume, soft pay.
Volume leaders: New York leads decisively with 10 listings. Indiana follows with 3. Missouri, Michigan, Georgia, Ohio, Maryland, Tennessee, California, Florida, and Texas each post 2. The remaining states post one apiece.
The headline misalignment: New York has the most jobs and the lowest pay. Missouri has two jobs and the highest.
FOR PHYSICIANS
If your priority is maximum compensation: Saint Joseph, Missouri, $300,000 flat. It is the top of the national range, and it is in Saint Joseph (a city whose cost of living will make the number feel closer to $400,000 in coastal terms).
If your priority is maximum optionality: New York, with 10 listings, is the only state offering anything resembling choice. You will trade roughly $40,000 off the ceiling for the privilege.
If your priority is balance: Michigan’s $225,000 – $250,000 range threads the needle — Midwest cost structure, mid-pack pay, and a real metro footprint.
The cost-of-living mismatch worth scrutinizing: New York pays the least and costs the most. The compensation gap worth scrutinizing: 18 of 21 states disclosed nothing at all.
FOR RECRUITERS AND HEALTHCARE EXECUTIVES
Salary transparency rate: 10 of 41 listings, or 24%. Three out of every four Infectious Disease postings ask candidates to inquire within. In a specialty already competing against Hospital Medicine and Critical Care for the same internist talent pool, opacity is a pipeline tax.
The volume-pay misalignment is structural: New York, the highest-volume state, anchors the bottom of the disclosed range. Recruiters in New York cannot lead with compensation. They will need to lead with academic affiliation, subspecialty pathways (transplant ID, HIV, antimicrobial stewardship), loan assistance, and lifestyle. Recruiters in Missouri, Michigan, and the eighteen silent states have a simpler job: post the number.
MARKET FORCES
SCOPE AND LEADERSHIP DO NOT VISIBLY COMMAND A PREMIUM HERE. The disclosed ceiling is $300,000, which in most specialties would describe a starting offer rather than a top-of-market outlier. Infectious Disease compensation is compressed because the work is cognitive, consultative, and reimbursed accordingly. Leadership track roles, if they exist in this dataset, are not breaking out of the band.
PART-TIME AND LOCUMS ARE NOT DISTORTING THE FLOOR — THEY ARE HIDING. The lone Locum Tenens listing in Fort Wayne, Indiana disclosed no rate, which is consistent with the broader 76% non-disclosure pattern. The $200,000 floor in New York appears to reflect full-time academic or hospital-employed pay, not a part-time artifact.
UNDERSERVED MARKETS ARE PRICING IN SCARCITY, QUIETLY. Saint Joseph, Missouri is not a destination market. It is paying the national ceiling because it has to. The same logic likely explains the silence from North Dakota, West Virginia, New Mexico, and Alabama — states that almost certainly pay above their disclosed peers but decline to advertise the fact.
THE VOLUME-PAY RELATIONSHIP IS INVERTED. New York has ten times the listings of Missouri and pays roughly $50,000 less at the high end. In Infectious Disease, supply of jobs does not signal demand for physicians — it signals saturation of training programs and academic medical centers willing to accept lower compensation in exchange for prestige and patient mix.
THE BOTTOM LINE
Infectious Disease is a small, compressed, geographically lopsided market where the highest disclosed salary in the country sits in a Missouri river town and the densest concentration of jobs sits in the city most likely to underpay you for them. Three-quarters of postings hide the number entirely. The physicians who win this market will be the ones willing to relocate to states that don’t appear in vacation brochures.
In Infectious Disease, the money goes where the people don’t.
Salary data based on 10 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.
