Medical interns' salaries and specialization time frames
Interns and residents are paid a modest salary. Figures very, but are generally around $35,000 (although the upper echelons can reach nearly double that). Residency salaries tend to increase by $1,000 - $2,000 with each year that passes.
Funding explained
The Department of Health and Human Services (Medicare, mostly) funds the majority of residency training. From tax-based finance, such funding covers resident salaries and their employee benefits through payments called Direct Medical Education (DME) payments. There are also Indirect Medical Education (IME) payments; these are subsidies paid to teaching hospitals, directly related to the number of Medicare patients which have been admitted and treated. Funding levels from Medicare have remained frozen since 1996. Arguments have been aired to the effect that that this has stifled the training of new physicians. Others argue that Medicare subsidies have simply provided surplus revenue, and that hospitals lessen their training costs by paying sub-standard salaries to their residents. Recent research suggests that a cap on Medicare funding is not a hindering factor in the availability of training places, but rather suggest that Residency Review Committees deliberately limit the number of specialists in order to maintain high incomes in those fields. Indeed, internships and residencies have existed far longer than Medicare subsidies. Viewed from this angle, those subsidies - capped or otherwise - represent something of a bonus.
Teaching hospitals, and many of them, supply funding toward resident training in order to increase the supply of resident slots. This practice alone has led to a reasonable growth of slots by around 4% over the past decade.
Time frames for common specializations
In order to let you know how long you'll be earning the trainee salaries, there follows a list of commonly found medical specialties and subspecialties, along with the length of their training programs (beyond medical school). These times include internship, residency, and where applicable, fellowship:
Emergency Medicine - 3-4 years
Dermatology - 4 years
General Surgery - 5 years; Subfields of surgery require an additional 1 to 4 years after the initial 5 year residency.
Internal Medicine; Subfields of internal medicine require an additional 2-3 years after the 3 year residency.
Neurology - 4 years
Anesthesiology - 4 years
Obstetrics and Gynecology - 4 years
Pediatrics - 3 years. The subfields of pediatrics require an additional 2 to 3 years after the three year residency.
Pathology - 4 years
Radiology - 4-5 years. Subfields of radiology require and additional 1-2 years after residency.
Psychiatry - 4 years