Physical Therapist Aides Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Physical Therapist Aides worker at that point in the distribution, so $38,240 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 44,010 people in May 2024, 0.03% of every job BLS counted. California is the largest employer at 6,800 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 34.2% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Wyoming, whose location quotient of 3.28 says this work is 3.28 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

One in ten workers in this field earns $24,960 or less, and one in ten earns $46,930 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.9 to 1 and the annual gap is $21,970. The mean ($35,510) versus median ($34,520) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Minnesota posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $44,340, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Physical Therapist Aides stands number 409 by employment and number 802 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 17% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.6% of the group's 7,448,000 jobs. In 23 of the 50 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $34,520, 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 5,150 jobs, 11.7% 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, St. Louis, MO-IL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $30,890 a year, against $45,400 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. 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

Budget arithmetic on the median: $2,877 a month before tax, $1,328 biweekly, $664 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($29,710) to the 75th ($38,240) is worth $8,530 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $37,972 would sit between the median ($34,520) and the 75th percentile ($38,240), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $29,710, is $4,810 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: Healthcare Support Workers, All Other, Massage Therapists, Medical Equipment Preparers, Orderlies, Occupational Therapy Assistants, Medical Transcriptionists. The full directory is on the Careers hub.