Recreational Therapists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Recreational Therapists offer sit among all 15,060 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

With 15,060 jobs nationally, Recreational Therapists make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 1,780 of those jobs, the top three states hold 27.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in Kansas (location quotient 5.07, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

The spread matters as much as the center. Earners at the 90th percentile make $96,600, which is 2.4 times the $39,520 at the 10th, a difference of $57,080 annually. Because the mean wage ($65,350) sits above the median ($60,280), a typical offer should be judged against the median and the 25th to 75th percentile band, not the mean.

Pay by state

The state spread for Recreational Therapists runs from the $96,530 median in California down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (1,780 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Recreational Therapists stands number 607 by employment and number 407 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, the group median wage is $98,340 across 71 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 39% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 15 of the 46 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $60,280, 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 1,110 jobs, 7.4% 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, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $68,590 a year, against $68,590 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. 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

As a household number, $60,280 a year is $5,023 a month gross, $2,318 every two weeks, $1,159 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($48,230) to the 75th ($77,680) is worth $29,450 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $5,023 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $66,308 would sit between the median ($60,280) and the 75th percentile ($77,680), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $48,230, is $12,050 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 Practitioners and Technical Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Occupational Therapists, Respiratory Therapists, Psychiatric Technicians, Veterinary Technologists and Technicians, Surgical Technologists, Dentists, General. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.