They are different in every state, but mostly around the 400-500 range last time I looked. Again, total compensation. Not saying you can't find a job that will give you a base salary of 450K before any benefits, just saying thats probably not the usual.
That being said, our hospital system was bought ought 2 years ago, and when they did they did a fair market value for each dept salaries based on state compensation averages; many dept's took a hit, ours did not. EM salaries just keep escalating, demand is ridiculous now, and noone wants to pay locums because they cost way above the normal hourly rate and most struggle to see one patient an hour. I'm not kidding. We've paid locums 250/hr to come and see 6 patients on a 9 hour shift, and pretty much screw up everything they do on those 6 patients.
Since noone wants anything to do with locums, and there just aren't enough EM docs out there to fill every job, we are in the drivers seat right now as a specialty. Who knows how long that will be. Someday maybe the federal govt takes over all of healthcare and dictates our salaries (dear lord I hope not) but medicine and reimbursement always changes. It maybe way better in 10 years, it may be way worse, it may be the same. Who knows. But I'm not going to look a gift horse in the mouth while things are good.
A few generalizations about salary:
1. If you want to do academics, you'll make less
2. If you want to do academics in a University hospital (instead of a community academic hospital), you'll make way less
3. If you want to live in a place everyone wants to live in (think San Diego), you aren't going to make nearly the amount of money you will in small town America, where you'll make way more and live on way, way less
4. You'll make less as a hospital employee, but have more job security
5. There is a job type out there for absolutely everyone; and you'll probably have to try a few until you find the location / contract type / compensation that maximizes your happiness
I consider myself fairly lucky. Given that academics are generally poorly compensated (I mean in comparison, lets face it, all of us are doing pretty well for ourselves), our hospital compensates our faculty fairly well. We make a 320 base salary that is made up of 12 nine hour shifts a month and four paid academic days. Any shift we work over the 12 is compensated at an overtime rate that incentives faculty to work more. Most of us gross over 400K before taxes. Obviously, there are then your benefits package on top of that package. A colleague of mine interviewed at a University based EM program for their program director job and was told he'd start as the Program Director at over 100K less than his base salary where I was. In the end, if you want to stay at a University based place and teach, you can expect to not get paid a fortune to do so.
I have friends from residency who are partners in a private group that make way more than I do. But I'll take working with residents any day of the week over being out on my own, which I did for four years before going into academics. Working with residents not only offsets the workload, but it keeps you constantly learning. What used to be boring (ANOTHER ABDOMINAL PAIN!!!!) is viewed completely differently when you have a medical student or junior resident working through the case. You always can find something to teach on. To me, academics is the easiest way to ward off burnout, but obviously, you aren't going to make over 500K doing it, so there is a trade off.
