Physical Therapist Assistants
What the pay figures show
- California comes first for physical therapist assistants on every measure. $83,110 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $65,555 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For physical therapist assistants, California's $83,110 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $65,555. 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$68,380
People doing it
112,430
Highest paid
$83,110
CA
Best off, really
$65,555
TX, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$47,750
Highest tenth
$89,510
Lowest, really
$45,529
DC
States with data
51
National average
$68,730
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
97.17%
TX, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $45,529 and $65,555. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 112,430 people hold this job nationally, earning $68,380 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $68,380, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation for physical therapist assistants is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $45,529 to $65,555. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- 112,430 are employed nationally in physical therapist assistants, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for physical therapist assistants, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Physical Therapist Assistants
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $47,750 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $68,380 |
| Top tenth earn over | $89,510 |
| This salary | $68,380 |
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 Assistants
The national median for this job
$68,380around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $47,750 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $68,380 |
| Top tenth | $89,510 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Physical Therapist Assistants, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | South Dakota · $49,310 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $83,110 |
| Spread | $33,800 |
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 | $78,000 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $80,268 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| TX | $78,000 | $63,703 | $65,555 |
| NV | $75,520 | $61,958 | $63,888 |
| AK | $77,640 | $63,450 | $62,380 |
| AR | $64,520 | $52,093 | $60,218 |
| SC | $70,500 | $56,068 | $60,174 |
| LA | $65,370 | $53,130 | $60,139 |
| ND | $63,520 | $53,218 | $60,085 |
| GA | $72,800 | $57,011 | $58,957 |
| WY | $63,550 | $53,242 | $58,606 |
| VT | $71,600 | $56,585 | $58,556 |
| DE | $74,610 | $57,625 | $58,059 |
| FL | $72,530 | $59,855 | $57,858 |
| MD | $77,670 | $60,145 | $57,851 |
| NC | $67,540 | $54,158 | $57,530 |
| IN | $65,280 | $52,736 | $57,208 |
| OH | $63,820 | $52,421 | $57,096 |
| VA | $73,760 | $57,240 | $56,814 |
| CT | $75,880 | $58,788 | $56,697 |
| TN | $62,500 | $52,399 | $56,638 |
| MS | $61,770 | $49,433 | $56,630 |
| CA | $83,110 | $63,661 | $56,547 |
| MA | $79,460 | $61,077 | $56,429 |
| KS | $64,500 | $50,695 | $56,350 |
| NJ | $78,440 | $61,206 | $56,213 |
| NH | $71,440 | $59,088 | $56,090 |
| MO | $63,770 | $51,359 | $55,970 |
| NM | $62,280 | $50,461 | $55,828 |
| IA | $61,030 | $49,510 | $55,776 |
| MT | $62,650 | $50,331 | $55,773 |
| WI | $64,080 | $51,319 | $55,124 |
| KY | $61,480 | $49,545 | $54,765 |
| NE | $61,370 | $49,402 | $54,663 |
| WV | $60,430 | $48,851 | $54,417 |
| AL | $61,430 | $48,892 | $54,343 |
| RI | $68,640 | $54,964 | $54,199 |
| OK | $59,480 | $47,796 | $54,138 |
| ME | $66,250 | $52,260 | $53,823 |
| MN | $66,770 | $52,786 | $53,635 |
| ID | $61,020 | $48,829 | $53,409 |
| MI | $61,670 | $49,362 | $52,410 |
| AZ | $64,650 | $52,913 | $52,334 |
| IL | $65,240 | $51,516 | $52,112 |
| OR | $73,180 | $54,459 | $52,004 |
| PA | $62,580 | $50,542 | $51,838 |
| UT | $61,980 | $49,223 | $51,812 |
| CO | $64,810 | $52,112 | $51,401 |
| WA | $66,450 | $55,573 | $51,190 |
| HI | $67,510 | $52,636 | $48,463 |
| SD | $49,310 | $41,801 | $47,449 |
| NY | $64,100 | $50,820 | $47,219 |
| DC | $63,400 | $50,447 | $45,529 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for physical therapist assistants as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $68,380, 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.
- Take-home figures for physical therapist assistants assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Texas, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $63,703.
- The price adjustment for physical therapist assistants uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — the District of Columbia anchors the bottom at $45,529. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for physical therapist assistants, with a national value of $68,380. 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.
- Take-home calculations for physical therapist assistants assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $63,703, in Texas. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms figures for physical therapist assistants deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.