Somewhere in Sunnyvale, California, an urgent care physician is being offered up to $395,000 a year to treat sore throats, sprained ankles, and the occasional patient who Googled their symptoms on the way in. Meanwhile, in New York, a comparable role bottoms out at $208,000 — a delta of $187,000 for what is, broadly speaking, the same job. The PhysEmp dataset captured 120 active urgent care listings across 32 states as of May 1, 2026. The thesis is simple: urgent care has quietly become one of the widest-variance specialties in the country, and geography is doing most of the talking.
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The Urgent Care Physician Job Market at a Glance

Total listings: 120
Listings with disclosed salary: 19
Full national range: $208,000 – $395,000
National average range: $287,379 – $309,103

The spread is the story. From floor to ceiling, the market nearly doubles. A nineteen-listing salary sample out of 120 is thin, but it is enough to surface the structural reality: urgent care pay clusters tightly in the high $200Ks, with a small group of West Coast and Mountain West outliers dragging the ceiling well past $340,000.

States represented (32): California, Texas, Georgia, Kansas, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Nevada, Kentucky, Missouri, New Mexico, Tennessee, Utah, South Carolina, North Carolina, Illinois, Wisconsin, Iowa, New York, Minnesota, Oregon, Hawaii, Indiana, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Maryland, North Dakota, Connecticut, Idaho, Oklahoma, Virginia, and Massachusetts.

That is a lot of geography for a specialty most patients associate with a strip mall.
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How States Stack Up

Overperformers

• California: $307,250 – $340,000 across nine listings, the only state that combines elite pay with real volume.
• Colorado: $335,000 – $345,000 across three listings, the most consistent top-tier market in the dataset.
• Kansas: $330,000 – $355,000 on a single listing, which is either a unicorn or a signal — pick your prior.
• Nevada: $325,000 – $336,000 across two listings, with Las Vegas pulling its weight.

Near-average

• Georgia: $282,500 – $305,000 across six listings, textbook benchmark.
• Florida: $280,800 – $291,200 across six listings, sunshine priced in.
• Kentucky: $280,800 – $305,760 on one listing, holding the line.
• South Carolina: $280,800 across three listings, flat but credible.

Underperformers

• Ohio: $265,000 – $280,000 across ten listings — the highest-volume state with disclosed pay, and it pays below average.
• Minnesota: $270,000 flat, no upside disclosed.
• Texas: $220,000 across the disclosed listing, dramatically below the national floor.
• New York: $208,000 – $312,000, home to the absolute national floor.

Volume leaders: Missouri (18, zero salary data), Ohio (10), California (9), Wisconsin (9, zero salary data), North Carolina (7, zero salary data), Oregon (7, zero salary data), Florida (6), Georgia (6), Hawaii (6).

The pattern: the states posting the most jobs are mostly the states refusing to post numbers.
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What This Means If You’re a Physician

If your priority is maximum compensation: the highest-paying listing is an urgent care role in Sunnyvale, CA at $385,000 – $395,000. Colorado, Kansas, and Nevada round out the top tier. Sunnyvale sits in one of the most expensive ZIP codes in North America, so net of housing, the Colorado and Nevada numbers may actually go further.

If your priority is maximum optionality: Missouri (18), Ohio (10), California (9), and Wisconsin (9) offer the deepest pipelines. Three of those four don’t disclose pay, which is its own kind of information.

If your priority is balance: California is the only state that delivers both volume and top-quartile compensation. Ohio is the budget version — real openings, predictable money, modestly below average.

Scrutinize Texas at $220,000 and New York at $208,000. Both are well below the national floor, and neither cost-of-living profile justifies the discount.
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What This Means If You’re a Recruiter

Salary transparency rate: 19 ÷ 120 = 15.8%.

That is a remarkably opaque market. More than 84% of urgent care listings ask physicians to apply on faith, which is a luxury employers no longer have when competing specialties routinely publish bands. Expect candidate pipelines to skew toward the listings that disclose — and expect ghosted applications on the ones that don’t.

The volume-pay misalignment is glaring. Missouri, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Oregon collectively account for 41 listings with zero disclosed compensation. If you are recruiting in those markets, the lead with comp is unavailable to you. Lead with schedule density, scope autonomy, shift structure, sign-on, or loan repayment. Physicians have learned to read silence as a discount.
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What’s Driving the Numbers

Geography is the primary compensation variable. The gap between Sunnyvale and San Antonio is $175,000 for substantially similar clinical work. Urgent care does not reward subspecialization the way cardiology or surgery does, so location, patient volume per shift, and local payer mix end up doing the heavy lifting. The premium markets are not random — they are coastal, high-cost, and supply-constrained.

The transparency gap is distorting the floor. With only 19 of 120 listings disclosing pay, the national average range of $287,379 – $309,103 is built on a sliver of the market. The states declining to publish are disproportionately the high-volume ones, which means the true national average is essentially unknowable. The dataset we have is the dataset that chose to be seen.

Volume and pay are inversely correlated here. Missouri leads on jobs and discloses nothing. Kansas has one listing and pays $355,000 at the top. Colorado has three listings and pays better than California on average. Scarcity is being priced in; saturation is being discounted. This is not how most specialty markets behave.

Part-time and per-diem roles may be compressing the low end. A $208,000 urgent care salary in New York is difficult to reconcile with full-time, full-scope work in that cost environment. Some portion of the low end of this dataset is almost certainly partial-FTE roles being annualized, which is worth confirming before drawing conclusions about any single state.

The Bottom Line

Urgent care in 2026 is a market where the ceiling is genuinely lucrative, the floor is genuinely concerning, and the middle is mostly hidden behind “salary not disclosed.” The best-paying jobs are concentrated in a handful of Western states with limited inventory. The highest-volume states are largely silent on compensation. Physicians willing to read between the lines — and negotiate without a public anchor — will find leverage. Everyone else will take Ohio.

Urgent care pays urgently well in a few places, urgently poorly in others, and refuses to say in most.
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Salary data based on 19 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.