Yes, the United States is facing a significant and growing shortage of anesthesiologists. Federal projections from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) estimate the country will be short roughly 10,660 anesthesiology physicians by 2038. Even by 2035, the specialty is projected to operate at only 93% of the workforce needed to meet demand. The gap is already being felt in hospitals across the country, driving up salaries, increasing reliance on temporary staffing, and reshaping how anesthesia care is delivered.
How Big Is the Current Gap?
The anesthesiology shortage is part of a broader physician workforce crisis. HRSA projects an overall deficit of more than 141,000 physicians across the U.S. by 2038, spanning 30 out of 35 specialties modeled. Anesthesiology is among the hardest hit, with a projected shortfall of 10,660 full-time equivalent positions.
Hospitals are already scrambling to fill open roles. According to data from the Association for Advancing Physician and Provider Recruitment, 65.4% of anesthesia physician searches in 2024 involved hiring a temporary (locum tenens) provider to keep operating rooms running while looking for a permanent hire. That figure stood out as the highest of any specialty with at least 50 active searches. Across all specialties, locum tenens usage nearly doubled from 9.2% in 2023 to 16.4% in 2024, but anesthesia’s rate far exceeds even that elevated average. As AAPPR CEO Carey Goryl put it, temporary staffing has become “a structural part of staffing in certain specialties,” not just a way to cover vacations.
Why the Shortage Is Getting Worse
Several forces are converging to widen the gap between how many anesthesiologists the country needs and how many are available to work.
An Aging Workforce
About 40% of practicing anesthesiologists in the U.S. are over age 55, and 12% are older than 65. A large wave of retirements is either underway or imminent, and the pandemic accelerated this trend. In a late-2022 survey of American Society of Anesthesiologists members, nearly 38% said the pandemic had moved up their retirement timeline.
Burnout and Early Exits
Burnout has surged since the pandemic. A large national survey found that 67.7% of U.S. attending anesthesiologists were at high risk for burnout by late 2022, up from 59.2% just before COVID-19 hit in early 2020. The rate of full burnout syndrome, where physicians report emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, and reduced sense of accomplishment simultaneously, jumped from 13.8% to 18.9% over that same period.
The consequences are concrete: 36% of respondents said they were likely to leave their current position within two years, and about 25% had already cut their weekly hours or planned to do so within the year. The strongest predictors of burnout weren’t long hours alone. Feeling unsupported at work was the single biggest driver, making anesthesiologists more than nine times as likely to be at high risk for burnout. Staffing shortages themselves roughly doubled the odds, creating a vicious cycle where fewer providers lead to more strain on those who remain. Growing production pressure from hospital financial difficulties and private equity involvement in healthcare was also cited as a contributing factor, since it can force physicians to prioritize volume over the patient safety standards central to their professional identity.
A Training Pipeline That Can’t Keep Up
The number of anesthesiology residency positions has grown steadily, from 1,370 in 2020 to 1,695 in 2024. That’s a healthy increase of about 24% in five years. The specialty also remains competitive, with roughly 3,034 applicants vying for those 1,695 first-year spots in 2024, and programs filling 100% of their positions. Interest in the field is not the bottleneck. The problem is that training takes time. An anesthesiology residency requires four years after medical school, meaning today’s expanded class sizes won’t produce practicing physicians until 2028 or 2029 at the earliest. Meanwhile, retirements and early departures continue to outpace new graduates entering the workforce.
Where the Shortage Hits Hardest
The shortage is not evenly distributed. Rural and underserved communities face the steepest deficits because anesthesiologists, like most specialists, tend to concentrate in urban academic medical centers and larger hospital systems. Smaller hospitals and surgical centers in less populated areas often struggle to recruit and retain even a single anesthesiologist, which can limit their ability to perform surgeries, manage emergency trauma care, or provide labor epidurals. When these facilities can’t staff their operating rooms, patients face longer wait times for procedures or must travel significant distances for surgical care.
How Hospitals Are Adapting
To bridge the gap, the healthcare system has increasingly turned to nurse anesthetists (CRNAs), who are advanced practice nurses trained to deliver anesthesia. Twenty-five states and Guam have opted out of federal requirements that CRNAs work under physician supervision, allowing them to practice independently. This policy shift has been especially important in rural areas where an anesthesiologist may not be available at all. The arrangement remains controversial within medicine, with anesthesiologist organizations raising concerns about safety and scope, but it has become a practical reality in much of the country.
Hospitals are also relying heavily on locum tenens providers to fill gaps, offering short-term contracts to anesthesiologists willing to travel between facilities. While this keeps operating rooms open, it comes at a premium cost and doesn’t solve the underlying workforce problem.
What the Shortage Means for Compensation
Basic supply and demand economics are driving anesthesiologist pay sharply upward. Average annual compensation jumped from $405,000 to $472,000 between 2022 and 2023, a 14% increase of nearly $70,000 in a single year. Despite this, many anesthesiologists report not feeling fairly compensated relative to their workload and the stress of the role. Rising pay may help attract medical students into the specialty, but it also increases healthcare costs for hospitals, which are ultimately passed along to patients and insurers.
What This Means for Patients
For most patients at large urban hospitals, the shortage may be invisible. Surgeries proceed, epidurals are available, and an anesthesia provider is present when needed. But the downstream effects are real. Surgical cases may be delayed or rescheduled when anesthesia coverage is thin. Hospitals operating with fewer anesthesiologists may have less flexibility to handle emergency cases alongside scheduled procedures. In some rural communities, entire categories of surgery have become unavailable locally.
The shortage also affects the quality of the experience for anesthesiologists who remain in practice, and overworked, burned-out providers are a patient safety concern in a specialty where vigilance during procedures is critical. With 40% of the workforce past age 55 and more than a third considering leaving their positions, the pressure on the system is likely to intensify before the expanded training pipeline begins to close the gap in the late 2020s and early 2030s.