Physician Assistant Salary in Georgia: Pay by Experience, City & Take-Home

A physician assistant in Georgia earns a median of $115,390 a year, which works out to about $55.48 an hour, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Most PAs in the state land between $62,230 at the 10th percentile and $172,050 at the 90th percentile. That’s a wide spread, and where you fall depends on experience, your metro, and the setting you work in.

How Georgia compares to the national PA salary

The national median for physician assistants is $135,880 a year, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025). Georgia’s median of $115,390 sits $20,490 below that. In percentage terms, a Georgia PA earns roughly 85 cents for every dollar the typical PA earns nationally.

That gap is real, but it isn’t the whole story. Georgia has no statewide income tax surcharge stacked on top of a high cost of living the way coastal states do, and the state mean of $112,090 tracks close to the median, which tells you the market here is fairly tight rather than skewed by a handful of very high earners. A lower headline number that comes with cheaper housing and a flat state income tax can leave you with more spendable income than a bigger gross in an expensive metro. We get into the exact net comparison in the take-home section below.

One thing worth flagging early: Georgia’s 10th and 25th percentile both sit at $62,230. When the bottom two percentile points land on the same figure, it usually means a cluster of early-career and part-time roles pay near an entry floor, and the real pay separation starts once you cross the median. That shapes how you should think about your first few years in the state.

Physician assistant pay in Georgia by experience

BLS reports pay by percentile rather than by years on the job, but the percentile ladder maps cleanly onto a career arc. Entry-level PAs cluster near the 10th to 25th percentile, mid-career hands sit around the median, and the experienced and senior tiers stretch toward the 75th and 90th. Here’s the full ladder for Georgia.

The jump from early career to mid-career is the steepest move you’ll make. Going from $62,230 to $115,390 nearly doubles your gross, and it almost always tracks with two things: clearing your first couple of years of supervised practice and moving into a specialty or a setting that pays a premium. Surgical PAs, emergency medicine, and dermatology tend to sit higher on this ladder than primary care.

From the median up to the experienced 75th percentile is another $26,350 of annual pay. That tier usually reflects PAs who have taken on call, who supervise other clinical staff, or who have built enough of a referral base in a procedure-heavy specialty to command it. The top step, from $141,740 to the senior $172,050, adds $30,310 and tends to belong to lead PAs, those in high-acuity surgical roles, or clinicians who have stacked a high-demand specialty on top of a decade-plus of experience.

The practical takeaway: your biggest pay raises in Georgia come from crossing the median, not from grinding out raises at the bottom. If you’re stuck near the entry floor, the move that pays is changing specialty or setting, not waiting.

It helps to put the full range in dollar terms. From the $62,230 entry floor to the $172,050 senior ceiling is a spread of $109,820. That’s the distance a Georgia PA can travel over a career, and almost the entire spread sits above the median. Put another way, the bottom half of the ladder is compressed into the $62,230 to $115,390 band, while the top half stretches across a much wider $115,390 to $172,050 range. The earning power is back-loaded. Patience at the start pays off only if you’re actively positioning for the move up, by building specialty depth and saying yes to the harder, better-paid work.

The hourly figures tell the same story in a way that’s easy to sanity-check against an offer. At the median, $55.48 an hour. At the experienced 75th percentile, roughly $68.14. At the senior 90th, about $82.72. If a Georgia employer quotes you an hourly rate, you can place yourself on this ladder instantly and know whether the offer is competitive for your stage. An entry rate near $29.92 is the floor; anything materially below it should prompt a hard conversation.

Physician assistant salary in Georgia by metro

Where you work inside Georgia matters more than people expect. The state’s largest PA employer by headcount is metro Atlanta, but it isn’t the highest payer. Several smaller metros post higher medians, which is a familiar pattern in healthcare: smaller markets pay up to attract clinicians who might otherwise head to a big city. Here are the five Georgia metros with the most PA employment, ranked by median pay.

Savannah leads at $125,500, edging out Athens-Clarke County at $125,460 by a hair. Both sit more than $13,000 above the Atlanta metro median of $111,810. Macon-Bibb County follows at $122,670, and Augusta-Richmond County rounds out the higher payers at $117,240.

Atlanta is the outlier on volume. With 3,970 PAs employed, the metro accounts for the bulk of the state’s 5,610 PA jobs, yet its median is the lowest of the five at $111,810. That’s the trade most PAs weigh: Atlanta has by far the most openings, the most specialties, and the most room to switch employers, but the per-job pay runs lower than in the smaller metros. If your priority is choice and mobility, Atlanta wins. If it’s the highest median on offer, Savannah, Athens, or Macon are worth a hard look, especially since housing in those markets typically costs less than in metro Atlanta.

Augusta deserves a mention of its own. At 350 PAs employed, it’s the second-largest PA market in the state, anchored by a major medical and academic presence, and its $117,240 median beats Atlanta’s while offering more depth than the smaller metros.

Add up the five metros and you account for 4,730 of Georgia’s 5,610 PA jobs. The remaining roughly 880 positions are spread across smaller cities and rural counties that BLS doesn’t break out individually. Those rural roles often carry the same pay-up dynamic you see in Savannah and Athens, where clinician scarcity pushes medians higher, so a PA willing to work outside the major metros can sometimes negotiate well above the Atlanta figure.

The dollar gaps between metros are large enough to matter for a relocation decision. The spread from the lowest metro median (Atlanta at $111,810) to the highest (Savannah at $125,500) is $13,690 a year. For a PA early in their career, that’s a meaningful raise that comes purely from geography, and it usually arrives alongside lower housing costs outside metro Atlanta. The catch is openings: Savannah lists 130 PA jobs to Atlanta’s 3,970, so the higher-paying markets are thinner and you may wait longer for the right role to open. If you can be patient and flexible on location, the smaller metros reward you. If you need a job now, or want the option to switch employers without moving, Atlanta’s depth is hard to beat even at the lower median.

Take-home pay after taxes for a Georgia PA

Gross salary is the headline. Take-home is what actually lands in your account. Below is the after-tax breakdown at four points on the Georgia pay ladder, using 2026 tax assumptions for a single filer. Each row shows federal income tax, FICA (Social Security and Medicare), Georgia state income tax, and what’s left as net annual and net monthly pay.

At the median, a Georgia PA grossing $115,390 keeps $83,990 after federal, FICA, and state tax, which is $6,999 a month. The effective tax rate at that level is 27.2 percent. The entry tier keeps 79.3 percent of gross (a 20.7 percent effective rate), while the senior tier hands over more, keeping $119,722 of a $172,050 gross at a 30.4 percent effective rate. The pattern is the usual one: the more you earn, the larger the share that goes to federal tax.

Here’s the comparison an AI overview won’t run for you. Take that same median PA and drop them into Texas, a state with no personal income tax. On the same $115,390 gross, a Texas PA nets $89,563 versus $83,990 in Georgia. That’s a gap of $5,573 a year, the exact amount Georgia’s state income tax pulls from the median paycheck. Over a decade in the field, that difference compounds into real money.

It’s worth seeing how the tax bite scales across the ladder, because it isn’t flat. At the entry tier, federal tax takes only $5,429 and the effective rate is 20.7 percent, so an entry PA keeps nearly four out of every five dollars. By the median, federal has climbed to $17,000 and the effective rate to 27.2 percent. At the experienced 75th percentile, federal reaches $23,265 and the effective rate hits 29.0 percent. At the senior 90th, federal is $30,539 and the effective rate tops out at 30.4 percent. The monthly net still rises at every step, from $4,111 to $6,999 to $8,387 to $9,977, but the share you keep shrinks as the brackets climb. That’s normal for a progressive federal system, and it’s the reason a raise never feels as big in your bank account as it does on the offer letter.

Georgia’s state tax line is the smaller of the deductions but worth understanding. It runs from $2,707 at the entry tier to $8,627 at the senior tier. FICA, which covers Social Security and Medicare, climbs from $4,761 to $13,162 across the same range. Of the three deductions, federal income tax grows the fastest as you move up, which is exactly why the cross-state comparison below centers on the state line, the one piece you can change by moving.

But the net number on its own isn’t the figure that decides your life. Net pay minus your local housing cost is. A $5,573 state-tax advantage in a Texas metro evaporates fast if rent or a mortgage there runs higher than what you’d pay in Macon or Augusta. Before you treat a no-tax state as a clear win, subtract local housing from net pay in both places and compare what’s left. That residual is the number that actually buys your groceries.

Run your own salary through the Georgia paycheck calculator to see your exact net, and if you want to model deductions and withholding before April, TurboTax walks through it line by line.

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How to earn more as a PA in Georgia

The data points to a few specific moves rather than vague advice. If you’re sitting near the median and want to climb toward the $141,740 experienced tier or the $172,050 senior tier, these are the levers that actually shift pay in this state.

• Move into a higher-paying specialty. Surgical, emergency medicine, dermatology, and cardiology PAs sit higher on the percentile ladder than primary care. Switching specialty is the single fastest way to jump from the median toward the 75th percentile.
• Target the higher-paying metros. A PA in Savannah ($125,500), Athens-Clarke County ($125,460), or Macon-Bibb County ($122,670) starts from a higher median than one in Atlanta ($111,810). If you’re flexible on location, that’s roughly $13,000 of annual pay for a move.
• Take on call and procedural work. Roles with call coverage and hands-on procedures pay a premium. The experienced and senior tiers in the data are heavily populated by PAs who said yes to both.
• Build toward a lead or supervisory role. The step from $141,740 to $172,050 often tracks with leading a PA team or running a clinic’s clinical operations.
• Stack credentials in a high-demand area. Certificates of Added Qualifications (CAQs) in specialties like emergency medicine or surgery signal depth and support a higher rate. Short, focused courses through a platform like Coursera can shore up clinical or business skills between certifications.

One caution on the entry floor: with both the 10th and 25th percentile at $62,230, the bottom of the Georgia market is sticky. If you’re starting out, don’t expect incremental raises to lift you off that floor quickly. The PAs who break out do it by changing specialty or setting within their first few years, not by waiting for a cost-of-living bump.

Job outlook for physician assistants in Georgia

Georgia employs 5,610 physician assistants, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (2025), with the heaviest concentration in metro Atlanta at 3,970 jobs. Augusta is the next-largest market at 350, followed by Athens at 160, Savannah at 130, and Macon at 120.

Physician assistant is one of the faster-growing clinical roles in the country, driven by an aging population and the push to widen access to care in places where physicians are stretched thin. Georgia’s rural and mid-size markets, the same ones posting higher medians, tend to feel that demand most acutely, which is part of why metros like Savannah and Athens pay up. If you’re job hunting, listings move fast in this field; setting an alert on ZipRecruiter for PA roles by metro is a simple way to catch openings as they post.

Related and higher-paying roles in Georgia

If you’re weighing the PA path against adjacent clinical careers in Georgia, here’s how the pay stacks up using BLS medians for the same state. A nurse practitioner in Georgia earns a median of $129,430, which is $14,040 more than the PA median of $115,390. A registered nurse earns a median of $93,550, which is $21,840 less than a PA. So in Georgia, the ladder runs RN, then PA, then NP, with a roughly $14,000 step up from PA to NP and a roughly $22,000 step down from PA to RN.

Frequently asked questions

Sources: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), 2025; ThePayGuide 2026 tax estimates for a single filer. Last updated 2026. See our methodology.