By Paige Twenter

Women account for 50.2% of all U.S. medical residents, achieving a majority share for the first time, according to the 2025 “Report on Residents.”

Women make up the majority of residents in obstetrics and gynecology at 88.8%, pediatrics at 75.8%, family medicine at 56.3% and psychiatry at 53.9%. Men are the majority of residents in orthopaedic surgery at 76.3%, neurological surgery at 72.9% and anesthesiology at 61.8%, the report said.

The AAMC’s 2025 “Report on Residents” highlighted 10 additional trends:

Pre-residency:

1. Less than one-third of graduating medical students have the same residency specialty preference as they did in their first year of medical school. In 2025, 29.4% of students graduating from U.S. medical schools indicated the same specialty preference as their first-year choice.

2. Specialties with the highest continuity of preference between first-year of medical school to graduation were orthopaedic surgery, neurological surgery and pediatrics.

Residency:

3. First-year residents in neurological surgery report participating in the highest average number of abstracts, presentations and publications.

4. Since 2019, the number of active residents has annually increased by about 4,000. In 2025, the AAMC recorded 163,189 medical residents in the U.S.

5. Across all specialties and subspecialties, women — for the first time — accounted for the majority of residents and fellows. In 2024-25, 50.2% of residents were women, compared to 49.1% in 2023, 48.3% in 2022 and 47.3% in 2021.

6. By race and ethnicity, 45.9% of U.S.-citizen MD residents reported white, 23.6% reported Asian, 9.3% Hispanic or Latino, 7.1% Black, 0.6% American Indian or Alaska Native, 0.5% Middle Eastern or North African, and 0.2% Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander.

Post-residency:

7. More than half, or 55.7%, of physicians who completed their residencies between 2015 and 2024 are practicing in the state where their residency training took place.

8. Women are more likely than men, by a difference of 58.7% and 53.2%, respectively, to practice in the state where they completed their residency training between 2015 and 2024.

9. California has the highest retention rate, with 75.7% of physicians practicing in that state after completing their residency there. The District of Columbia has the lowest retention rate at 66.4%.

10. Among those who completed residency training between 2015 and 2024 and now hold a full-time faculty position, 78.5% are at the assistant professor level.