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Anesthesiologists

Also called Anesthesiology, MD anesthesiologist, Physician anesthesiologist, Attending anesthesiologist, Anesthesiology attending

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 38,760 US anesthesiologists, with median pay of $391,490 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the highest was 41,890, in May 2024. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 500 from 1929, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for anesthesiologists: AI-processed EEG depth monitoring + predictive hemodynamics, 2015 to 2023.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 3.6% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.

Last updated .

Cite this page
APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Anesthesiologists: jobs and pay since 1929 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/29-1211

Chicago

Future History. "Anesthesiologists: jobs and pay since 1929." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/29-1211.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_29_1211, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Anesthesiologists: jobs and pay since 1929}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/29-1211}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

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1850187519001925195019752000now
2026
Known then as Anesthetist / Ether Administrator (informal, performed by surgeons, nurses, or junior physicians)
Known then as Anesthetist (nurse or physician, no formal specialty)
Known then as Anesthesiologist / Anesthetist (specialty in formation; ABA created 1938, primary board 1941)
Known then as Anesthesiologist (board-certified specialty; ABA primary board since 1941)
Known then as Anesthesiologists (BLS SOC 29-1211)
Known today as Anesthesiologists (BLS SOC 29-1211)
Projected to still be called Anesthesiologists (BLS SOC 29-1211)
Data from the May 2025 survey
US Employment
39K
Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic
Report an error
Median Annual Wage
$391,490
Est.

≈ $381,453 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic
Report an error
Beat · 1846

October 16, 1846: William T. G. Morton publicly demonstrates ether anesthesia at Massachusetts General Hospital on patient Edward Gilbert Abbott. The surgeon John Collins Warren removes a vascular tumor from Abbott's jaw while Abbott remains unconscious and pain-free. Warren's reported verdict to the assembled medical students: "Gentlemen, this is no humbug." Within weeks, ether anesthesia spreads to hospitals in London, Paris, and across the US. For the first time in history, surgery can be performed without the patient's conscious participation, and the path toward modern surgical medicine is opened.

Beat · 1905

Nine physicians from Long Island organize the first professional anesthesia society in the US; it has 23 members by 1911. The Society renamed itself the American Society of Anesthetists in 1936 and the American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) in 1945. This slow organizational development reflects the contested status of anesthesia in early 20th-century medicine: it was performed by nurses, medical students, and surgeons without specialty designation, and organized medicine was not initially convinced that it warranted independent specialty status.

Beat · 1941

February 16, 1941: The American Board of Medical Specialties approves the American Board of Anesthesiology as a primary independent board, equal in standing to the American Board of Surgery, Internal Medicine, and the other founding specialties. The ABA had been founded in 1938 as a division of the American Board of Surgery and gave its first written certification examination on March 28, 1939. The 1941 elevation to primary board status formalized anesthesiology as a physician specialty and drew a clear line between board-certified physician anesthesiologists and nurse anesthetists. This distinction would be contested legislatively and clinically for decades.

Beat · 1942

January 23, 1942: Harold Griffith and Enid Johnson at Homeopathic Hospital in Montreal administer Intocostrin (a standardized curare preparation) to a twenty-year-old plumber undergoing appendectomy. The patient's muscles relax completely without increasing the depth of narcosis; the operation is uneventful. Griffith and Johnson publish their results in Anesthesiology in July 1942. Curare immediately transforms what general anesthesia can accomplish: abdominal surgery, thoracic surgery, and soon cardiac surgery become technically feasible at levels of anesthetic depth that no longer threaten the cardiovascular system. The anesthesiologist's job becomes dramatically more complex overnight.

Beat · 1985

The Anesthesia Patient Safety Foundation (APSF) is established in 1985, following a series of high-profile anesthesia-related deaths and a crisis in malpractice insurance costs. The APSF pioneers the use of quality improvement and systems-engineering thinking in clinical medicine. The following year, in October 1986, the ASA adopts the first-ever detailed, explicit, minute-to-minute procedural monitoring standards in modern healthcare: requiring pulse oximetry and capnography for all general anesthetics. Malpractice insurance premiums for anesthesiologists fall by 66% over the following five years, and anesthesia-related mortality improves dramatically. The APSF model of specialty-driven patient safety becomes a template for quality improvement across medicine.

Beat · 2022

The American Society of Anesthesiologists reports that the proportion of medical facilities reporting a shortage of anesthesiologists rose from 38% in 2020 to nearly 80% in 2022. The shortage is driven by a convergence of factors: accelerated retirement of senior anesthesiologists during the COVID-19 pandemic (many in the high-risk age group chose early retirement or reduced schedules), a rapid rebound in elective surgery volume in 2021-2022 after pandemic-era cancellations, and the continued expansion of ambulatory surgery centers that require anesthesia coverage but often lack the institutional infrastructure to attract and retain anesthesiologists in competitive markets.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace anesthesiologists? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say
Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.
BLS Employment Projections 2025-35
→ 2035
+3.6%
BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 29-1211 (Anesthesiologists): 41.5 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 43.0 thousand in 2035, a change of +1.5 thousand (+3.6%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (3.9% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.
Official statisticReport an error
How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)
Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.
Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"
2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)
29.4%
of tasks
What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 29-1211.00 Anesthesiologists. Shown: human-rated β = 0.294, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.059 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.529; GPT-4-rated β 0.25. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error
Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for anesthesiologists

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereConduct pre-anesthesia evaluation and generate AI-assisted pre-op notes: review patient history, surgical plan, and comorbidities

Conduct pre-anesthesia evaluation and generate AI-assisted pre-op notes: review patient history, surgical plan, and comorbidities; use OpenEvidence to check drug interactions and anesthesia-specific contraindications for the patient's medication list; use Dragon Copilot or Abridge ambient scribe to generate the pre-anesthesia evaluation note from the face-to-face patient interview; and document the individualized anesthetic plan including airway risk assessment (Mallampati, thyromental distance, neck mobility), aspiration risk, and special considerations (difficult airway algorithm, allergy history, prior anesthesia adverse events).[9],[10],[8],[1]

Where your edge is

Dragon Copilot and Abridge ambient scribes can draft the pre-anesthesia evaluation note structure from the verbal interview, reducing documentation time per the JAMA 2025 RCT (62% reduction in after-hours documentation across specialties). Your irreplaceable contribution is the clinical synthesis: the Mallampati score is a physical observation the AI cannot make, the decision to use a video laryngoscope as primary rather than backup requires integrating physical exam findings with the patient's surgical position and surgeon tolerance for desaturation, and the risk-benefit conversation with a patient who has severe COPD and is terrified of anesthesia is irreducibly relational. Use AI documentation to reduce your administrative burden; invest the recovered time in the pre-op conversation and airway plan.

AI is sitting alongside you hereManage perioperative medication safety and controlled substance oversight using AI surveillance: review Bainbridge Health medication intelligence platform alerts for statistical outliers in IV drug administration patterns that may indicate diversion or medication errors

Manage perioperative medication safety and controlled substance oversight using AI surveillance: review Bainbridge Health medication intelligence platform alerts for statistical outliers in IV drug administration patterns that may indicate diversion or medication errors; verify anesthetic drug waste witness documentation; and use Bainbridge analytics to identify practice-level patterns of medication administration that differ from department benchmarks, integrating findings into quality improvement reviews and documenting corrective actions.[11],[7],[1]

Tools picking this up
Where your edge is

Bainbridge Health detects statistical outliers in medication administration patterns (unusual timing, dose, or waste documentation compared to departmental baselines) that manual review of anesthesia records cannot efficiently surface at scale. Deployed at many academic medical centers, this platform represents an AI tool that reduces both diversion liability risk and medication error exposure for the attending anesthesiologist of record. As the DEA-licensed prescriber responsible for all controlled substances in your OR, understanding the behavioral patterns that Bainbridge flags, and distinguishing legitimate clinical variation from surveillance signals, requires your clinical context. This tool is also an accountability mechanism: be aware that your own administration patterns are being monitored against departmental norms.

AI is sitting alongside you hereManage post-anesthesia care and generate handoff documentation: assess patient readiness for PACU discharge using Aldrete or Modified Aldrete scoring criteria

Manage post-anesthesia care and generate handoff documentation: assess patient readiness for PACU discharge using Aldrete or Modified Aldrete scoring criteria; manage postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) prophylaxis and treatment protocols; direct pain management in PACU including multimodal analgesia adjustments; and generate the post-anesthesia care note using Dragon Copilot or Suki AI ambient scribe, documenting anesthetic technique, intraoperative events, reversal agents administered, and PACU instructions for nursing and surgical team.[9],[12],[1],[8]

Where your edge is

PACU discharge decisions require integrating clinical observation (patient responsiveness, pain scores, nausea, oxygen saturation on room air, hemodynamic stability) with the full intraoperative record: a synthesis that AI cannot perform without your clinical presence and judgment about this specific patient's recovery trajectory. However, the PACU documentation burden (anesthesia record summary, post-op pain management plan, PONV treatment documentation) is highly amenable to ambient scribe automation. Dragon Copilot and Suki generate PACU note drafts from your verbal summary during or after patient hand-off. The JAMA 2025 RCT showing 62% reduction in after-hours documentation applies directly here: the post-anesthesia note is one of the most time-consuming documentation tasks per encounter.

Where anesthesiologists go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

What each move takes

Anesthesiologists with depth in anesthesia information management systems (AIMS), OR data analytics, and clinical AI evaluation are well positioned for Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO), VP of Clinical Informatics, or medical director of perioperative informatics roles. Anesthesia generates some of the most data-dense clinical records in medicine (medication administration timestamps, ventilator parameters, and intraoperative event documentation) making the OR an early and active deployment environment for AI analytics tools. Anesthesiologist-CMIOs who understand both the clinical workflows and the data architecture are uniquely positioned to evaluate AI monitoring systems (HPI, BIS, closed-loop TIVA), lead AIMS selection and implementation projects, and design the real-world evidence infrastructure that health systems need to evaluate their OR AI investments.

What you'd add
  • · Health informatics credentials: AMIA 10×10 certificate or Master of Biomedical Informatics; ABPM Clinical Informatics board certification (fellowship pathway available for anesthesiologists)
  • · AIMS and perioperative data architecture: Epic Anesthesia module configuration, HL7 FHIR integration for OR device data streams, and anesthesia quality metric registry design (NACOR, National Anesthesia Clinical Outcomes Registry)
  • · Clinical AI evaluation: FDA SaMD classification for anesthesia monitoring tools, algorithm validation methodology for closed-loop systems, and equitable AI audit for algorithmic bias in predictive hemodynamic tools
  • · Data science fundamentals: SQL for EHR data analysis, Python or R for AIMS data modeling, and real-world evidence generation from anesthesia outcome registries
  • · OR analytics platforms: Epic reporting workbench for surgical and anesthesia KPIs, Tableau for OR efficiency dashboards, and NACOR data submission and benchmarking
What it takesSome new skills to pick up
Tools of the era

How has the work of anesthesiologists changed since 1846?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

  • Open-drop ether and chloroform (improvised inhalation, no monitoring)

    The first generation of anesthesia used simple glass and cloth apparatus: Morton's original ether globe (a glass flask with a sponge and a wooden mouthpiece), or the "Squibb" ether inhalers that followed. Chloroform, introduced in 1847, required even simpler delivery: a cloth folded into a cone and held over the face. Neither agent had any monitoring technology. The anesthetist judged depth by watching the patient breathe, observing pupil size, and monitoring the pulse by finger. There was no formal training, no standard dose, and no safeguard against overdose.

    Effect on the work

    The advent of surgical anesthesia created a new role in the operating room, but it was not yet a profession: anyone capable of holding an ether cone and watching a patient could give anesthesia. Surgeons, nurses, medical students, and general practitioners all served as anesthetists without distinction.

  • Nitrous oxide cylinders, ether inhalers, and early anesthesia machines (Boyle's machine, 1917)

    The Boyle's machine, introduced in Britain in 1917 and refined through the 1920s-1930s, was the first device that allowed an anesthetist to deliver a controlled mixture of nitrous oxide, oxygen, and ether or chloroform through a mask with adjustable flow rates. This was the beginning of machine-mediated anesthesia delivery. In the US, the McKesson-Foregger and Ohio machines served similar functions. The machines did not monitor the patient but they did give the anesthetist a reproducible delivery mechanism, and their introduction coincided with the first formal nurse anesthesia training programs (around 1909 at St. Vincent's Hospital in Portland, Oregon). The era ended with curare in 1942.

  • Curare neuromuscular blockade + intravenous anesthesia (succinylcholine 1951, halothane 1956)

    On January 23, 1942, Harold Griffith and Enid Johnson in Montreal administered curare (Intocostrin) to a patient undergoing appendectomy. This single event transformed the concept of general anesthesia: instead of requiring deep narcosis to achieve muscle relaxation (which also dangerously suppressed breathing and circulation), the anesthesiologist could now use a paralytic agent to achieve relaxation at a much lighter depth of anesthesia. The triad of narcosis, analgesia, and muscle relaxation became the conceptual foundation of modern anesthesia practice. Succinylcholine, a shorter-acting neuromuscular blocker, was introduced in 1951 and became essential for rapid-sequence intubation. Halothane (1956) was the first non-flammable volatile agent, replacing explosive ether and cyclopropane and transforming OR safety. These tools required an anesthesiologist capable of intubating the trachea, managing positive-pressure ventilation, and reversing neuromuscular blockade. The era fundamentally elevated the technical requirements of the role.

    Effect on the work

    The curare revolution created the basis for cardiac surgery, neurosurgery, and thoracic surgery on a scale not previously possible. The Vineberg procedure (1950) and the first open-heart surgery using cardiopulmonary bypass (Gibbon, 1953) were only possible with anesthesiologists who could manage a patient on bypass. This drove explosive demand for specialty-trained physician anesthesiologists through the 1950s and 1960s.

  • Electronic monitoring: ECG, arterial line, capnography, pulse oximetry (ASA standards 1986)

    The 1970s brought the first electronic monitoring tools into the OR: continuous ECG waveform display became standard, invasive arterial line monitoring enabled beat-to-beat blood pressure tracking, and mass spectrometry allowed the first gas analysis of inhaled and exhaled anesthetic agents. Pulse oximetry, invented by Takuo Aoyagi in Japan in 1974, arrived in US ORs in the early 1980s; capnography (end-tidal CO2 monitoring) followed. The critical institutional moment was October 21, 1986, when the ASA House of Delegates adopted the first-ever detailed, explicit, minute-to-minute monitoring standards in modern healthcare: continuous pulse oximetry and capnography became required for all general anesthetics. Malpractice insurance premiums fell 66% over the subsequent five years. The electronic monitoring era transformed the anesthesiologist from a clinical observer into a physiologic data integrator simultaneously watching several continuous parameter streams.

    Effect on the work

    The 1986 ASA monitoring standards and the patient safety movement they catalyzed substantially reduced preventable anesthesia deaths. This improvement in safety made elective surgery far more acceptable to patients, expanding the surgical and thus the anesthesia workforce further.

  • Anesthesia Information Management Systems (AIMS) + propofol total intravenous anesthesia (TIVA)

    The 1990s introduced two technology threads that reshaped the anesthesiologist's information environment. Propofol (approved by the FDA in 1989) enabled total intravenous anesthesia with far smoother induction, maintenance, and emergence than volatile agents, quickly becoming the dominant induction agent and the backbone of TIVA protocols. Simultaneously, Anesthesia Information Management Systems began digitizing the paper anesthetic record: Duke University's early automated system was a pioneer, and by the 2000s commercial AIMS (CompuRecord, Epic Anesthesia, Fusion, Provation) were capturing physiologic data streams automatically into the electronic medical record. AIMS transformed the anesthesiologist's role in documentation from real-time paper charting to supervising an automated record with exception management. The shift also generated the large anesthesia outcome datasets that would later power AI predictive monitoring tools.

    Effect on the work

    Propofol TIVA enabled the migration of surgical procedures from hospital ORs to ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs), which required shorter recovery times. ASC growth through the 1990s-2000s significantly increased the total number of anesthesia cases without proportionally increasing inpatient surgical volume, diversifying anesthesiologist work settings.

  • AI-processed EEG depth monitoring + predictive hemodynamics (BIS, Masimo SedLine, Edwards HPI)

    Medtronic's Bispectral Index (BIS, first cleared 1996 but reaching broad adoption after 2000) processes raw EEG waveforms into an index correlating with depth of anesthesia, enabling quantitative titration of volatile agents and propofol. Masimo SedLine (2008) added a 4-electrode array providing the Density Spectral Array visualization. The step-change of this era was the Edwards Lifesciences Hypotension Prediction Index (HPI, FDA-cleared 2018), the first AI tool to predict an anesthesia complication before it happens rather than detecting it after the fact: a machine-learning algorithm on arterial waveform morphology that predicts hypotension several minutes in advance. A 2020 randomized controlled trial published in JAMA (the HYPE trial, Wijnberge et al.) showed approximately 75% reduction in time spent in dangerous hypotension when HPI-guided management was used. These tools represent a qualitative shift from monitoring the present state to anticipating the near-future state, allowing proactive interventions rather than reactive corrections.

    Effect on the work

    AI monitoring tools in this era augmented anesthesiologist decision-making and improved measurable outcomes (reduced awareness events, reduced hypotension burden, reduced volatile agent waste) without displacing physician roles. The APSF (2024) frames AI/ML tools in anesthesia as clinical decision support systems that require ongoing clinical oversight, algorithm governance, and physician judgment rather than operating autonomously.

  • Ambient AI documentation scribes + AI ultrasound guidance (Dragon Copilot, Abridge, Caption AI)

    The 2023-2026 era brought two additional AI layers to the anesthesiologist's workday: ambient documentation and AI-guided procedural imaging. Ambient clinical scribes (Microsoft Dragon Copilot, Abridge, Suki AI) listen to the anesthesiologist's verbal interaction with patients during pre-anesthesia evaluation and generate structured clinical notes for EHR attestation, reducing documentation time per published studies. A 2025 JAMA multi-site randomized controlled trial showed ambient AI scribes reduced after-hours EHR documentation by 62% across physician specialties. AI-enhanced point-of-care ultrasound (GE Venue R3 with Caption AI overlay, Butterfly Network iQ3) provides real-time nerve structure identification during regional anesthesia blocks, reducing scanning time and assisting less-experienced practitioners without replacing the procedural needle skill. No fully autonomous closed-loop anesthesia system has received FDA clearance for unsupervised operation; the Journal of Clinical Monitoring and Computing 2025 systematic review confirms that all validated systems require continuous physician supervision.

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Anesthesiologists employment and pay by year

On record since1846
Latest US employment38,760 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Latest US median pay$391,490 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error
Outlook+3.6% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error
View all 13 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
YearUS employmentAnnual pay (median unless marked)SourceReport
1929500n/aEst., AMA Journal of Ethics 2015 Researched contextReport
19504,100n/aEst., Wood Library-Museum of Anesthesiology Researched contextReport
1965n/a$28,000Est., White Coat Investor Researched contextReport
197012,000n/aEst., IARS Historical Timeline 1922-1942… Researched contextReport
199026,000$210,000Est., APSF Article (employment) Researched contextEst., White Coat Investor (pay) Researched contextReport
200033,500n/aEst., Becker's ASC Review Researched contextReport
201931,010n/aBLS OEWS May 2019 Official statisticReport
202028,590n/aBLS OEWS May 2020 Official statisticReport
202131,130n/aBLS OEWS May 2021 Official statisticReport
202237,430n/aBLS OEWS May 2022 Official statisticReport
202333,470n/aBLS OEWS May 2023 Official statisticReport
202441,890n/aBLS OEWS May 2024 Official statisticReport
202538,760$391,490BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statisticReport
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