Southern radiology pays. That’s the message of a new compensation survey published this week by AuntMinnie.com and healthcare recruiting firm CompHealth. The survey found that radiologists from some southern states in the U.S. made more than their northern and western counterparts -- in some cases, significantly more.
AuntMinnie’s CompHealth SalaryScan survey collected data from more than 4,300 radiology professionals over a five-week period in April and May. It covered 18 job categories, from radiologist to nuclear medicine technologist, and every country in the world.
U.S. radiologists came out on top of the global salary heap, with an average base salary of $267,466 and a median salary of $250,000. U.S. radiologists enjoyed average bonuses of $88,450, and their average merit increase was 8%-10%.
The U.S. region with the best-paid radiologists was the East South Central area, comprising the states of Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, and Alabama, with an average base salary of $354,595. Radiologists in another southern region, the West South Central zone (Texas, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Louisiana) enjoy average base salaries of $296,958.
These figures compare to an average base salary of $266,157 in the Pacific region (Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California, and Hawaii) and $247,183 in the Middle Atlantic zone (New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania), according to the SalaryScan results.
Radiologists in the New England states (Maine, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Connecticut) have the lightest wallets, with an average base salary of $211,513.
On a global scale, the next best-compensated region for radiologists was Canada, with an average base salary of $251,708 and a median salary of $240,000. Coming in third was Australia and New Zealand, where the average base salary was $116,658 and the median salary $127,500.
RTs see salaries grow
The ongoing shortage of radiologic technologists in the U.S. may be contributing to strong salary growth for individuals in this profession. The SalaryScan survey found an average base salary of $44,021 and a median salary of $43,000 for RTs in the U.S. This compares favorably to U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data from 2000, which found median annual earnings of $36,000.
Regional salary demographics for RTs in the U.S. differed significantly from radiologists, however. Southern areas including the U.S. East South Central region weren't as lucrative for RTs as they were for imaging physicians. RTs in this zone had an average base salary of $40,545 -- below the national average of $44,021. Unlike radiologists, RTs did better in coastal regions: the average base salary in the Pacific region was $48,481, and in the Middle Atlantic states it was $45,952, according to the SalaryScan data.
Not surprisingly, specialized skills paid off for technologists. U.S. sonographers had an average base salary of $54,115 and a median salary of $55,000, a 23% increase over the average base salary for RTs. The SalaryScan results compare to BLS statistics that found a median annual salary of $44,820 for sonographers in 2000.
Nuclear medicine technologists recorded an average base salary of $54,916 and a median salary of $53,000 in the SalaryScan survey, compared with $44,130 from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Radiology administrators in the U.S. made an average base salary of $69,561 and a median salary of $68,000, according to the AuntMinnie/CompHealth results.
AuntMinnie members can conduct searches on comparable salaries in their professions by going to the SalaryScan database query tool on AuntMinnie’s Job Boards home page, at http://jobs.auntminnie.com.
By Brian Casey
AuntMinnie.com staff writers
June 10, 2002
Related Reading
Radiology job market looks rosy in coming years, October 15, 2001
Is a career in radiology right for you?, June 2001
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