Occupational Therapy Assistants Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Occupational Therapy Assistants ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $59,950. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 47,910 people in May 2024, 0.03% of every job BLS counted. Texas is the largest employer at 5,660 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 26.2% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Rhode Island, whose location quotient of 2.10 says this work is 2.10 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $37,860 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($86,930) is 1.8 times the 10th percentile ($49,070), a gap of $37,860 a year. The mean of $68,540 sitting above the median of $68,340 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $79,420, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Occupational Therapy Assistants stands number 395 by employment and number 295 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Healthcare Support Occupations, the group median wage is $41,590 across 17 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 64% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.6% of the group's 7,448,000 jobs. In 20 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $68,340, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 2,140 jobs, 4.5% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $60,000 a year, against $77,540 in Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands, TX. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Occupational Therapy Assistants paycheck, gross, is $2,628 every two weeks on an annual $68,340, which is $5,695 a month and $1,314 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($59,950) to the 75th ($77,340) is worth $17,390 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $75,174 would sit between the median ($68,340) and the 75th percentile ($77,340), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $59,950, is $8,390 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Healthcare Support Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Massage Therapists, Medical Equipment Preparers, Orderlies, Physical Therapist Aides, Medical Transcriptionists, Pharmacy Aides. The full directory is on the Careers hub.