Occupational Therapists
What the pay figures show
- California pays occupational therapists the most, $124,510. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Arkansas wins, at $92,682. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For occupational therapists, California leads both nominally at $124,510 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Arkansas first at $92,682. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$100,330
People doing it
162,450
Highest paid
$124,510
CA
Best off, really
$92,682
AR, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$71,690
Highest tenth
$131,950
Lowest, really
$64,411
NH
States with data
51
National average
$101,280
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
86.51%
AR, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $64,411 to $92,682. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- 162,450 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $100,330. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $100,330, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Geographic dispersion in occupational therapists is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $64,411 through $92,682. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- National employment in occupational therapists is 162,450 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for occupational therapists, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Occupational Therapists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $71,690 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $100,330 |
| Top tenth earn over | $131,950 |
| This salary | $100,330 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Occupational Therapists
The national median for this job
$100,330around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $71,690 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $100,330 |
| Top tenth | $131,950 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Occupational Therapists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | North Dakota · $83,200 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $124,510 |
| Spread | $41,310 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $106,140 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $109,226 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| AR | $106,360 | $80,178 | $92,682 |
| NV | $110,520 | $86,581 | $89,277 |
| OK | $104,300 | $78,012 | $88,363 |
| TX | $106,140 | $83,499 | $85,927 |
| LA | $98,490 | $75,549 | $85,516 |
| TN | $97,700 | $77,562 | $83,837 |
| OH | $99,390 | $76,734 | $83,577 |
| NM | $99,170 | $75,068 | $83,052 |
| MS | $94,930 | $71,908 | $82,376 |
| KY | $97,650 | $74,227 | $82,047 |
| KS | $99,170 | $73,351 | $81,533 |
| WV | $96,190 | $72,983 | $81,298 |
| SC | $101,130 | $75,672 | $81,213 |
| IN | $97,020 | $74,251 | $80,546 |
| AK | $103,680 | $81,769 | $80,390 |
| MO | $97,290 | $73,638 | $80,249 |
| ID | $97,760 | $73,276 | $80,149 |
| GA | $104,010 | $77,410 | $80,052 |
| AL | $94,050 | $71,050 | $78,970 |
| CA | $124,510 | $88,881 | $78,949 |
| CO | $106,720 | $79,920 | $78,831 |
| NE | $93,740 | $71,214 | $78,798 |
| AZ | $103,660 | $79,566 | $78,696 |
| IA | $89,910 | $69,277 | $78,044 |
| SD | $85,050 | $68,663 | $77,942 |
| WA | $107,670 | $84,576 | $77,906 |
| PA | $98,440 | $75,060 | $76,985 |
| UT | $97,150 | $72,852 | $76,685 |
| WY | $86,170 | $69,451 | $76,447 |
| MD | $106,980 | $79,291 | $76,267 |
| FL | $99,360 | $78,730 | $76,103 |
| DE | $102,130 | $75,169 | $75,735 |
| ND | $83,200 | $66,998 | $75,642 |
| NC | $92,940 | $71,014 | $75,435 |
| MT | $88,990 | $67,767 | $75,094 |
| IL | $99,700 | $74,179 | $75,038 |
| OR | $112,310 | $78,563 | $75,021 |
| WI | $92,390 | $69,796 | $74,972 |
| RI | $100,040 | $75,809 | $74,753 |
| VA | $100,710 | $74,649 | $74,094 |
| CT | $102,440 | $76,000 | $73,296 |
| VT | $93,340 | $70,445 | $72,898 |
| MI | $89,910 | $68,511 | $72,742 |
| DC | $109,170 | $79,320 | $71,586 |
| NJ | $103,410 | $77,182 | $70,885 |
| MN | $93,050 | $69,487 | $70,604 |
| MA | $100,930 | $75,108 | $69,391 |
| HI | $102,870 | $74,824 | $68,893 |
| NY | $96,390 | $71,994 | $66,892 |
| ME | $84,310 | $63,756 | $65,662 |
| NH | $83,900 | $67,854 | $64,411 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for occupational therapists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $100,330, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for occupational therapists. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, California keeps the most at $88,881.
- Levelling out prices for occupational therapists is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — New Hampshire sits at the bottom on $64,411.
- These are distribution medians for occupational therapists, with a national value of $100,330. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- The household modeled for occupational therapists is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis California retains the most, $88,881. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to occupational therapists uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is New Hampshire at $64,411. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — New Hampshire anchors the bottom at $64,411 — and the two source series are dated independently.