By Jonathan Pierce, healthcare labor reporter with 13 years covering graduate medical education, physician compensation, and hospital staffing
Last reviewed: July 19, 2026
Johns Hopkins’ published 2025–26 house-staff scale begins at $73,685 for PGY-1 and reaches $103,269 at the sixth fellowship year in the cardiology program’s current table. Those figures sit far below the BLS physician median of at least $239,200, because residency and fellowship are supervised training appointments rather than independent-practice physician jobs.
myJH is an institutional portal used by Johns Hopkins trainees and employees. It does not determine stipends, benefits, work requirements, or progression through graduate medical education.
The Johns Hopkins resident pay scale
Johns Hopkins Emergency Medicine publishes four current academic-year stipend levels:
| Training level | AY 2025–26 stipend | Increase from prior level |
|---|---|---|
| PGY-1 | $73,685 | Not applicable |
| PGY-2 | $76,792 | $3,107 |
| PGY-3 | $80,489 | $3,697 |
| PGY-4 | $83,856 | $3,367 |
Source: Johns Hopkins Emergency Medicine, “Residency Salary and Benefits,” academic year 2025–26.
The increases are tied to postgraduate year rather than a newly negotiated salary for each rotation. Moving from PGY-1 to PGY-4 adds $10,171, or approximately 13.8%, across the published four-level scale. That percentage is calculated from Johns Hopkins’ listed stipends.
The scale should not be read as a complete earnings statement.
A resident’s total package can include health coverage, insurance, leave, meal support, educational funds, or a housing allowance, depending on the program and current institutional rules. Some departments publish those additions clearly. Others direct applicants to the central house-staff benefits material.
The stipend is the cleanest comparable number. It is not the whole arrangement.
Fellowship pay continues through later PGY levels
Clinical fellowship usually follows residency, but the stipend remains connected to postgraduate training level.
Johns Hopkins Cardiology lists the following FY2025–26 clinical fellow stipend levels:
| Fellowship year | Published stipend |
| Year 1 | $83,856 |
| Year 2 | $87,546 |
| Year 3 | $91,831 |
| Year 4 | $95,063 |
| Year 5 | $97,940 |
| Year 6 | $103,269 |
Source: Johns Hopkins Cardiology Fellowship Program, FY2025–26 stipend table.
The fellowship table begins at the same $83,856 figure shown for PGY-4 in Emergency Medicine. That pattern supports the interpretation that Johns Hopkins clinical-fellow pay follows a university-determined postgraduate-year structure rather than an entirely separate specialty salary market. Johns Hopkins’ Interventional Cardiology program also states that trainee salary levels are based on the university PGY scale and adjusted annually.
At the sixth listed fellowship level, the stipend is $29,584 higher than PGY-1. That is a 40.1% nominal increase across the published training scale, calculated from $73,685 and $103,269.
It remains training pay.
A highly specialized fellow may deliver complex patient care, perform procedures, teach junior clinicians, and contribute to research while earning less than the national physician wage benchmark.
Where the physician-pay comparison misleads
BLS reports that physicians and surgeons earned a median wage equal to or greater than $239,200 annually in May 2024. The occupation typically requires medical school followed by three to nine years of internship and residency, with another one to three years of fellowship for some subspecialties.
Comparing that figure directly with a PGY-1 stipend produces a dramatic gap:
- Johns Hopkins PGY-1: $73,685
- BLS physician median threshold: at least $239,200
- Difference: at least $165,515
The mathematical difference is real. The occupational comparison is incomplete.
BLS physician compensation reflects practicing physicians across employers, specialties, experience levels, and compensation models. Residency stipends reflect structured postgraduate education with supervision, required rotations, and program accreditation.
The resident is already a physician. The labor market does not pay the resident as an independent attending physician.
That is the central economic tension of graduate medical education.
Residents perform clinical labor while completing required training. Their pay rises primarily with PGY status rather than the market value of every procedure, overnight shift, or patient encounter.
Hourly conversions can distort the picture
A $73,685 annual stipend converts to $35.43 an hour using a conventional 40-hour workweek.
That calculation is rarely the useful one.
The Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education permits resident clinical and educational work of up to 80 hours per week, averaged over four weeks, under its duty-hour standards. Actual schedules vary by specialty, rotation, call arrangement, and program. The ACGME limit is a ceiling, not evidence that every Johns Hopkins resident works exactly 80 hours weekly.
At 60 hours per week for 52 weeks, the PGY-1 stipend converts to roughly $23.62 an hour. At 80 hours, it converts to about $17.71. These are calculations, not Hopkins-published hourly rates.
Such conversions also miss paid leave, health benefits, educational time, and weeks whose schedules differ.
They remain useful for one reason: an annual stipend can look closer to an ordinary professional salary than the workload structure actually feels.
Annual pay hides time.
Program-specific additions change the package
Johns Hopkins Infectious Diseases publishes a clearer fellowship package.
Its 2025–26 table lists salaries of $83,856, $87,546, and $91,831 for the first three fellowship years. It also lists a $3,500 housing stipend, a $300 cell-phone stipend, subsidized parking, family health coverage at no additional expense, and a 2% 403(b) retirement contribution for eligible non-T32 fellows.
For a first-year infectious-diseases fellow, the named housing and phone additions bring the stated cash amount to $87,656 before considering insurance or retirement value. That total is calculated from the official $83,856 salary, $3,500 housing stipend, and $300 phone stipend.
Johns Hopkins Neuroradiology publishes a similar package for a PGY-6 fellow:
- $91,831 salary
- $3,500 housing stipend
- 2% employer retirement contribution
- medical, dental, and vision coverage for the fellow and dependents at no cost
- term life and long-term disability insurance.
The PGY label differs across program pages because a fellow’s postgraduate year reflects prior training, not simply the year number within the current fellowship.
That detail matters when comparing salaries. “First-year fellow” does not always mean PGY-4.
Housing stipends are not consistent across every page
The Johns Hopkins Pediatric Residency page lists older 2023–24 figures, including:
- PGY-1 salary of $70,176
- a $2,000 moving stipend for PGY-1
- a $2,000 housing stipend for residents
- five weeks of annual vacation.
Those figures should not be presented as the current 2025–26 institution-wide package.
The page is valuable because it shows that program-specific additions have existed, but its salary year is older than the Emergency Medicine and fellowship tables used for the current comparison.
This is a recurring source problem.
Residency pages may remain online after a new academic year begins. A search result can display a valid Johns Hopkins page while the underlying numbers belong to an earlier cycle.
The date must travel with the figure.
Johns Hopkins locations do not all use one scale
Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital publishes a separate pediatric residency scale:
- PGY-1: $67,895
- PGY-2: $69,967
- PGY-3: $72,065.
That PGY-1 figure is $5,790 below the current Baltimore Emergency Medicine PGY-1 stipend of $73,685. The comparison uses two official Johns Hopkins pages, but it does not establish that every Baltimore program pays one scale and every Florida program another.
The employing institution and sponsored program control.
Johns Hopkins All Children’s also lists employer-provided malpractice coverage, short- and long-term disability benefits equal to 60%, and life insurance with a value equal to annual salary.
A lower salary figure can therefore sit inside a different regional and benefit structure. Cost of living, state taxation, housing, commuting, and institutional benefits all affect the economic comparison.
The Johns Hopkins name does not create a single national residency contract.
Health coverage carries measurable value
Johns Hopkins Anesthesiology states that health coverage is available at no payroll cost to house staff, spouses, domestic partners, and dependent children.
Infectious Diseases similarly says family health insurance is covered without additional expense to clinical fellows. Neuroradiology lists no-cost medical, dental, and vision coverage for fellows and dependents.
The value can be substantial, particularly for a trainee covering dependents.
No universal dollar amount should be added to the stipend, because premium value depends on plan design, coverage tier, employer cost, and the comparison plan used. The published Johns Hopkins pages establish that certain programs provide coverage without employee premium deductions; they do not publish one cash-equivalent value for every household.
Insurance is compensation. It is not salary.
Medical-school debt changes the reality of the stipend
AAMC reported that the median debt for the medical-school graduating class of 2024 was $205,000. It also reported median four-year attendance costs for the class of 2025 of $286,454 at public medical schools and $390,848 at private medical schools.
Those are national medical-education figures, not Johns Hopkins graduate debt figures.
They explain why a stipend above $70,000 can still feel financially constrained.
Residents may enter training with six-figure educational balances while facing housing costs, relocation, professional licensing expenses, board examinations, transportation, and ordinary living expenses. Repayment terms vary by loan type and individual circumstance.
The stipend cannot be evaluated only against the national household-income distribution. It sits at the beginning of a delayed physician earnings path after many years of education.
This delay is part of the compensation model.
AAMC supplies the better residency-market comparison
The Association of American Medical Colleges maintains the “AAMC Survey of Resident/Fellow Stipends and Benefits” and published its latest available results in 2025. The downloadable report provides stipend information by postgraduate year and benefit practices among participating institutions.
That survey is the appropriate national peer source for residency stipends.
BLS physician wages answer what practicing physicians earn. AAMC stipend data answer what teaching institutions pay residents and fellows during training.
The two should not be substituted for one another.
The public AAMC page confirms the survey and downloadable 2025 results, but the search material reviewed here does not expose every national PGY mean directly. No national average is stated in this article without the underlying workbook value being verified.
Generic salary sites often skip that restraint.
Benefits are reviewed annually
The Johns Hopkins “House Staff Benefits Overview” says its described benefits apply to the 2025–26 year and that benefit plans and costs are reviewed annually and may be modified.
That caveat affects every comparison.
A housing allowance published by one fellowship may change the following year. A retirement contribution can depend on the funding mechanism. Parking subsidies and insurance arrangements may vary by program or appointment.
A current salary table does not make every older benefit page current.
The strongest source order is:
- the current program offer or appointment agreement;
- the central GME contract and policies;
- the current house-staff benefits overview;
- the current department page;
- older program pages and third-party estimates.
The appointment year controls.
Residents and fellows remain employees in training
Johns Hopkins’ Office of Graduate Medical Education oversees residency and clinical-fellowship programs sponsored by the School of Medicine and maintains centralized contract and policy resources for trainees.
That institutional structure reflects a dual status.
Residents and fellows provide patient care as paid house staff. They also occupy supervised educational programs governed by accreditation, progression standards, evaluations, and specialty requirements.
Their compensation is therefore neither a student scholarship nor a normal attending-physician salary.
It is a standardized training stipend attached to postgraduate year, supplemented by institutional and program benefits.
That model produces predictable advancement while limiting individual salary negotiation compared with many attending positions.
Where the stipend headline misleads
“Johns Hopkins residents earn $73,685” is true only for the published Baltimore PGY-1 scale used here.
A PGY-4 resident earns $83,856. A later clinical fellow may earn more than $100,000. A resident at Johns Hopkins All Children’s may be on another scale. Some fellows receive housing, phone, retirement, parking, or family-insurance provisions not included in the salary line.
The opposite claim also fails.
Calling the stipend “low physician pay” ignores that it belongs to a time-limited accredited training stage with structured progression and substantial noncash benefits. It does not erase the long hours, debt burden, or care responsibilities carried by residents.
The accurate description is narrower: Johns Hopkins house-staff stipends rise with postgraduate level but remain well below practicing-physician wages during the required training period.
What public data cannot establish
The reviewed sources do not provide one consolidated figure for:
- average weekly hours across Johns Hopkins residencies;
- effective hourly pay by specialty;
- moonlighting income;
- average educational debt among Hopkins residents;
- total benefit value per trainee;
- average housing costs paid by house staff;
- retention after fellowship;
- the share of graduates hired as Johns Hopkins faculty;
- total compensation by funding source.
Program pages publish stipends and selected benefits. AAMC provides national stipend-survey infrastructure. BLS provides practicing-physician wage data.
None alone describes the full economics of residency.
Frequently asked questions
Does myJH determine resident pay?
No. Johns Hopkins GME and the training appointment do.
What is the Johns Hopkins PGY-1 salary?
Johns Hopkins Emergency Medicine lists $73,685 for academic year 2025–26.
How much does a PGY-4 resident earn?
The same Johns Hopkins table lists $83,856.
What do later clinical fellows earn?
Johns Hopkins Cardiology lists stipends through fellowship year six, reaching $103,269 in FY2025–26.
Do Hopkins fellows receive a housing stipend?
Some programs publish one. Infectious Diseases and Neuroradiology list $3,500, while benefit details can vary by program and year.
Is family health coverage employee-paid?
Several Hopkins program pages state that health coverage for fellows, spouses, or dependents is provided without additional premium expense. The current appointment documents determine the applicable coverage.
Why is resident pay much lower than attending pay?
Residency and fellowship are required supervised training stages. BLS reports practicing-physician median wages of at least $239,200, while Hopkins house-staff stipends follow postgraduate-year scales.
Do all Johns Hopkins hospitals use the same stipend?
No. Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital publishes a separate pediatric residency scale, including $67,895 for PGY-1.
The most defensible compensation figure is the stipend stated for the exact Johns Hopkins program and academic year, read together with its housing, insurance, retirement, leave, and schedule terms.
