Chiropractors and podiatrists are two of the most interesting professions in the healthcare industry. According to surveys done by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average chiropractor salary in 2011 was $78,780 which is equivalent to a mean hourly salary of $37.88. The average podiatrist salary, meanwhile, was $133,870 for the same year, which is equal to $64.36 per hour. Both of these annual salary figures are calculated from the resultant hourly wages by multiplying these wages by a full-time, 2080-hour work year (or 40 hours a week and 52 weeks a year).
As you can see, podiatrists generally earn more money per hour than chiropractors, and this justifies the long educational schooling period required to become a podiatrist. Podiatrist salary is expected to be higher than most jobs in healthcare, as it would take you 4 years of additional postgraduate study to be able to become licensed.
Interestingly, to become a chiropractor takes roughly an equal amount of time at school as it does to become a podiatrist – four years of postgraduate study. The only difference, perhaps, is the possibility for a student who has only finished two years of undergraduate study to take a chiropractic program. However, a lot of schools nowadays require 3-4 years of undergraduate schooling (the same requirements for a podiatric program) to be admitted in a chiropractic course.
The average chiropractor salary stated above does not apply to all chiropractors’ earnings, as nearly half of all chiropractors working in the U.S. are self-employed. Many chiropractors realize that they can make more money with a private practice, so just like massage therapists a good percentage of these workers tend to move on from employment in the early stages of their career to self-employment.
Both chiropractors and podiatrist are considered physicians – chiropractors take care of the muscular-skeletal system while podiatrists deal with diseases of the foot. Each is very specialized, but if you think about it, for approximately the same amount of schooling time, it would be more financially beneficial to become a podiatrist – a less known profession – than to be a chiropractor. Think about it: the difference between the average chiropractor salary and the average podiatrist salary is more than $50,000 a year — a full-time year-round salary for many workers in other fields.