A single posting in Kentucky — a state with exactly one Pulmonary Critical Care opening on the board — is paying $450,000 a year. Meanwhile, New York, with nine listings and a metropolitan skyline of academic medical centers, tops out at a disclosed average of $358,333. The market for physicians who manage ventilators and ICU crash carts spans 35 listings across 16 states, with only 6 employers willing to put a number on the table. The thesis writes itself: in Pulmonary Critical Care, the states where the jobs are concentrated are not the states where the money is.
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The Pulmonary Critical Care Job Market at a Glance

Total listings: 35
Listings with disclosed salary: 6
Full salary range: $300,000 to $450,000
National average range: $366,667 to $391,667

Six disclosures out of thirty-five is not a dataset so much as a polite suggestion. Still, the spread is real: a $150,000 gap between the floor and ceiling for a specialty where the day-to-day work — keeping critically ill patients on the correct side of the mortality line — does not vary nearly that much by ZIP code.

The average range itself is narrow, which suggests employers who do disclose are clustering around a familiar number. The outliers are doing the heavy lifting on both ends.

States represented: Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Texas, Utah, Rhode Island, Arizona, Ohio, Georgia, Illinois, Florida, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Iowa.
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How States Stack Up

Overperformers:

• Kentucky — One listing, $450,000, top of the national range. Scarcity has a price tag, and someone in Kentucky is paying it.
• Indiana — A flat $400,000 from ProMedical Staffing in Indianapolis, comfortably above the national average ceiling.
• Illinois — A range of $350,000 to $425,000, with the upper bound rivaling the national leaders and three listings to choose from.

Near-average:

• Illinois (again) — Its floor sits just below the national average floor, making it the most honest benchmark in the dataset.

Underperformers:

• New York — Nine listings, an average range of $333,333 to $358,333, and the lowest individual posting in the country (a Long Island role at $300,000 to $350,000). Volume leader, compensation laggard.

Volume leaders: New York (9), Pennsylvania (4), Massachusetts (3), Texas (3), Illinois (3), Florida (2), Indiana (2). Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Texas disclosed nothing — a combined ten listings with zero salary data.
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What This Means If You’re a Physician

If your priority is maximum compensation: Look at Kentucky ($450,000), then Indianapolis, Indiana, where ProMedical Staffing LLC is offering a flat $400,000 — the highest concretely disclosed flat-rate listing in the national set. Illinois deserves a serious look for its $425,000 ceiling.

If your priority is maximum optionality: New York has nine doors to knock on. Just understand that the disclosed pay sits below the national floor.

If your priority is balance: Illinois offers three listings and a range that touches both sides of the national average. It is the closest thing to a sensible middle in this market.

The cost-of-living mismatch is hard to miss: New York City pricing on a Long Island salary that bottoms out at $300,000 is a math problem worth running before signing.
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What This Means If You’re a Recruiter

Salary transparency rate: 6 of 35, or 17.1%. Roughly one in six employers is willing to say what the job pays.

That number has consequences. Candidates increasingly filter listings by disclosed compensation, and 82.9% of these postings are invisible to that filter. Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Texas — collectively ten listings — disclosed nothing.

The volume-pay misalignment is sharpest in New York: highest listing count, lowest disclosed salaries. Recruiters in that market cannot lead with the number. They will need to lead with academic affiliation, case mix, fellowship pipelines, or quality-of-life specifics. Kentucky and Indiana, conversely, can lead with the number and let it do the work.
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What’s Driving the Numbers

Scarcity is pricing itself in. Kentucky and Indiana, with one and two listings respectively, are paying at or near the top of the national range. When a health system in a low-volume state needs an intensivist, it does not have the luxury of waiting for the local market to soften — because there is no local market.

Volume does not equal leverage for employers. New York’s nine listings should, in theory, indicate a competitive bidding environment for candidates. Instead, the disclosed numbers run below the national floor. The likely explanation: dense academic ecosystems, prestige-as-currency, and a deep candidate pool willing to trade dollars for institutional names.

Disclosure is a signaling problem. The 17.1% transparency rate skews the dataset toward employers confident enough — or desperate enough — to publish their offer. The silent 82.9% includes the entire Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Texas markets, which means the true national average is a guess wearing a lab coat.

The compensation band is tighter than it looks. Strip out the Kentucky outlier and the Long Island floor, and most of the disclosed market clusters between $350,000 and $425,000. For a subspecialty this acute, that is a remarkably narrow corridor.

The Bottom Line

Pulmonary Critical Care is a specialty where geography pays more than reputation, scarcity pays more than density, and silence pays more than either — because most employers are not telling you what they will pay until you are deep in the conversation. The candidates who win this market are the ones willing to look past the New York listing count and ask Kentucky a direct question.

In Pulmonary Critical Care, the best-paying job in America is in the state with exactly one job in America.
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Salary data based on 6 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.