Physical Therapist Aides
What the pay figures show
- Alaska comes first for physical therapist aides on every measure. $55,760 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $46,191 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For physical therapist aides, Alaska's $55,760 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $46,191. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
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
$35,240
People doing it
48,150
Highest paid
$55,760
AK
Best off, really
$46,191
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$25,360
Highest tenth
$47,780
Lowest, really
$22,433
LA
States with data
50
National average
$36,430
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $22,433 up to $46,191.
- Only 48,150 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $35,240 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Alaska leads the published set.
- The nominal spread for physical therapist aides approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $22,433 to $46,191, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in physical therapist aides is 48,150. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- Coverage for physical therapist aides runs to 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: Physical Therapist Aides
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $25,360 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,240 |
| Top tenth earn over | $47,780 |
| This salary | $35,240 |
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 Physical Therapist Aides
The national median for this job
$35,240around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $25,360 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,240 |
| Top tenth | $47,780 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Physical Therapist Aides, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $22,460 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $55,760 |
| Spread | $33,300 |
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 | $31,590 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $32,508 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $55,760 | $46,983 | $46,191 |
| ND | $37,680 | $32,456 | $36,643 |
| MT | $38,950 | $32,402 | $35,905 |
| MN | $42,330 | $34,746 | $35,305 |
| OH | $37,220 | $31,779 | $34,613 |
| CO | $41,970 | $34,765 | $34,291 |
| ME | $39,660 | $32,657 | $33,634 |
| WI | $36,820 | $30,803 | $33,087 |
| NH | $40,460 | $34,690 | $32,930 |
| KY | $35,490 | $29,572 | $32,687 |
| WV | $34,840 | $29,294 | $32,631 |
| IN | $35,100 | $29,377 | $31,868 |
| WA | $39,500 | $33,918 | $31,243 |
| NC | $34,760 | $29,231 | $31,051 |
| SD | $31,330 | $27,354 | $31,050 |
| SC | $33,280 | $28,557 | $30,648 |
| NM | $31,990 | $27,469 | $30,391 |
| PA | $35,520 | $29,630 | $30,390 |
| IL | $36,650 | $29,959 | $30,306 |
| AZ | $35,260 | $30,032 | $29,704 |
| FL | $35,140 | $30,415 | $29,400 |
| WY | $30,470 | $26,663 | $29,349 |
| DC | $38,950 | $32,305 | $29,155 |
| AR | $29,450 | $25,212 | $29,144 |
| CT | $35,770 | $29,967 | $28,900 |
| NV | $31,970 | $27,868 | $28,736 |
| CA | $38,330 | $32,309 | $28,699 |
| TN | $30,320 | $26,542 | $28,690 |
| DE | $34,060 | $28,224 | $28,436 |
| MA | $37,440 | $30,711 | $28,374 |
| TX | $31,590 | $27,563 | $28,364 |
| IA | $29,120 | $25,083 | $28,257 |
| MD | $34,780 | $28,837 | $27,738 |
| VA | $33,390 | $27,850 | $27,643 |
| MO | $29,250 | $25,245 | $27,511 |
| OR | $36,060 | $28,549 | $27,262 |
| NY | $35,380 | $29,294 | $27,219 |
| NJ | $34,430 | $29,329 | $26,937 |
| ID | $28,660 | $24,543 | $26,845 |
| OK | $27,630 | $23,620 | $26,754 |
| GA | $30,550 | $25,801 | $26,682 |
| NE | $28,080 | $24,102 | $26,669 |
| MS | $27,370 | $23,146 | $26,516 |
| MI | $29,350 | $24,766 | $26,295 |
| RI | $31,200 | $26,499 | $26,130 |
| HI | $33,810 | $28,119 | $25,890 |
| UT | $29,150 | $24,305 | $25,584 |
| AL | $27,290 | $22,961 | $25,521 |
| KS | $25,280 | $21,301 | $23,677 |
| LA | $22,460 | $19,818 | $22,433 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for physical therapist aides as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $35,240, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for physical therapist aides, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Alaska, at $46,983.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for physical therapist aides. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Louisiana, on $22,433.
- These are distribution medians for physical therapist aides, with a national value of $35,240. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for physical therapist aides model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $46,983, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for physical therapist aides rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Louisiana anchors the distribution at $22,433. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.