I was looking at the bureau of labor statistics and they list pods at around 120k. Why is there such a difference?
Long story short, I don't know. BLS collects their data through a mail survey apparently. They list the median around $120,000 and the mean around $140,000.
BLS reports that there are 9,500 podiatrists, not including self employed podiatrists, but probably including residents since the job categories are predetermined and a resident's best option on the survey would be podiatrist. I would think that residents (and those in fellowships) bring the stats down considerably. Consider that if there are 9,500 podiatrists total (I believe there are really at least 12,000) and 550 graduating students per year then there are about 1,650 residents and 7,850 practicing podiatrists (again, I think this number is low). Residents make about $50,000 per year. The BLS data uses an hourly wage system, and then multiplies that by 40 hour work weeks to get the overall wage. For a resident working 80 hours per week for a wage of $50,000, that works out to something like $12/hour, whereas a practicing podiatrist working 40 hours per week and making $225,000 per year (surgical podiatrists make about $280,000 while general podiatrists make about $215,000, there are more general podiatrists so the average works out to about $225,000) would be making about $108/hour. Now, BLS bases the mean annual wage off a mean hourly wage of $65.47/hour, pretty well in between the $12/hour of a resident or the $108/hour. The resident situation could account for a good amount of the discrepancy, but certainly not all of it. And keep in mind that the resident situation doesn't factor in for the BLS dentist data, since that's what we were comparing earlier.
The fact that BLS doesn't count "self employed" podiatrists also may factor in. I'm not exactly sure what "self employed" means, but if it means business owners, the podiatrists who own practices and a larger percentage of which make millions/year, then that could also be bringing the BLS mean down quite a bit.
However, I'll stick with the MGMA survey (people seem to trust them), ACFAS survey, and other surveys from podiatry professional organizations since they generally come with a lot more data than what BLS shows and they are much more transparent with how they collect and combine their data. Besides that, if you look over in the podiatric residents and physicians thread there are people pretty fresh out of residency reporting $240,000 and $280,000 base salary contracts that they just signed. Counting their bonuses they could both break $300,000/year. If someone out of residency can get a job for more than double what the BLS says the mean is, that gives good cause to question BLS. What dyk343 and Ankle Breaker are reporting is more in line with the ACFAS survey and the MGMA survey.
Of course, their situation is not the norm, but it does show the kinds of salaries that a podiatrist can command as a young podiatrist at the beginning of a career, probably far from the peak salaries that they'll earn.
