The STS Compensation Survey: What It Means for Early Career Surgeons

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With its initial release in 2023, the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Compensation Survey represents one of the few formal, comprehensive reports on provider compensation published by a subspecialty surgeon group. Now in its third iteration, the 2025 survey continues to shed light on trends in cardiothoracic surgery compensation and provides granular information on demographics, experience level, productivity, and practice type¹. Compensation data published by the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) or Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) lack such detail, making the unique impact of the STS survey evident.

The survey represents a major step forward for the field, and it is of particular importance for early-career surgeons. Trainees are often ill-equipped to understand compensation structures on a deeper level, as discussing money can be perceived as inappropriate or awkward. Emphasis is rightly placed on finding a job that provides a supportive environment to build a practice, further develop clinical skills, and secure strong mentorship. Compensation is often treated as a checklist item that needs to be "good enough." However, without comparative data, it is impossible to know what compensation adequately reflects a surgeon’s worth. The 2025 survey highlights several trends that are noteworthy for early career surgeons¹.

Compensation Trends and Transparency

In an era of rising costs and threats to reimbursement, compensation trends for early career CT surgeons are reassuring. Total median cash compensation growth varied across subspecialties. From 2024 to 2025, overall compensation for cardiac, thoracic, hybrid, and congenital surgeons grew by 5%, 0%, 11%, and 7%, respectively.

Notably, these trends were highly favorable for surgeons that were relatively new in practice:

• Surgeons within 2 years of training: Cardiac, general thoracic, and hybrid practice surgeons reported an annual growth in median total compensation of 18.3%, 7.7%, and 20.9%, respectively.
• Surgeons 3–5 years out of training: Growth ranged from 1.5% for cardiac surgeons to 15.5% for general thoracic surgeons.
  Interestingly, year-over-year median work RVU productivity remained relatively stable across specialties despite these pay increases. These promising trends are reflected in favorable median compensation satisfaction scores, where all specialties except transplant reported a median score of 4 on a 1–5 scale (5="very satisfied" ).

However, the survey also exposed a persistent lack of clarity regarding how compensation models are communicated. When asked how clearly employers communicated compensation structures (1-5, 5= always), the average score for the entire cohort was a mediocre 3.33. This score did not vary much by experience level. Participants expressed even lower satisfaction when asked if employers consistently provided benchmarking data (average 2.32). Scores trended even lower among early-career surgeons. These findings target the heart of the matter: how surgeons are compensated shouldn't be a black box. Surgeons must feel empowered to have open, honest conversations about pay structures. By promoting dialogue, instruments like the STS survey can help generate much-needed workplace transparency.

Compensation Beyond the Dollars and Cents

For the first time, survey participants were asked to rank non-monetary job features that carry similar weight to salary. These factors included schedule flexibility, work autonomy, support for childcare/tuition, hospital/departmental leadership, collegiality, resource availability, career advancement opportunities, mentorship, prestige, and geographic location.

Of these, respondents ranked schedule flexibility, work autonomy, and supportive colleagues at the very top. Interestingly, mentorship—which is traditionally viewed as crucial for younger surgeons—was not highly ranked.

As an early career surgeon, I would argue that having supportive colleagues and mentors ultimately impacts long-term job satisfaction far more than salary alone. While these cultural characteristics are rarely written explicitly into a contract, they are vital factors to gauge whether you are evaluating a first job, renegotiating a current position, or navigating a career transition.

Compensation and the Gender Gap

One of the most startling findings of the initial 2023 survey was the severe pay disparity between male and female cardiothoracic surgeons, with women earning just 64% to 93% of their male counterparts' salaries depending on the subspecialty². The 2025 survey shows improvement, albeit marginal¹:

• Cardiac surgery: Women earned 15.7% less than men (an improvement from 22% in 2023).
• General thoracic surgery: Women reported earning 11% less than men (an improvement from 19% in 2023).

Initial salaries can have a powerful "anchor effect" and serve as the baseline for future raises, bonuses, and promotions². Early-career female surgeons must actively advocate for clear workplace benchmarking. Normalizing discussions around compensation and promoting transparency are vital steps toward eliminating gender-based pay disparities and working towards equity.

Moving Forward

Overall, the 2025 STS survey highlights promising financial trends for early career surgeons. The survey does have inherent limitations, as it relies on self-reported data from members who elected to participate. However, as more surgeons discuss the results of the survey, hopefully participation continues to grow. By providing benchmark data, the compensation survey allows early-career surgeons to more confidently engage in conversations that were previously deemed too uncomfortable to have. As future iterations of the survey emerge, discussing compensation will hopefully become a more normalized part of surgical practice.

References

1.    The Society of Thoracic Surgeons. STS Compensation Survey. Accessed May 1 2025. https://www.sts.org/resources/life-career/sts-surgeon-compensation-survey
2.    Erkmen CP, Tompkins AK, Blackmon S, et al. Gender Disparities in Compensation of Practicing Cardiothoracic Surgeons: Analyzing The Society of Thoracic Surgeons Compensation Survey. Ann Thorac Surg. Nov 2025;120(5):975-982. doi:10.1016/j.athoracsur.2025.05.038