Physical Therapists
What the pay figures show
- Where are physical therapists paid best? California, at $124,190. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Alaska is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and Nevada wins — the money there behaves like $89,807. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for physical therapists is California at $124,190, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Alaska; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to Nevada at $89,807 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
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
$102,760
People doing it
267,330
Highest paid
$124,190
CA
Best off, really
$89,807
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$77,140
Highest tenth
$135,140
Lowest, really
$67,383
DC
States with data
51
National average
$105,280
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, 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 $67,383 and $89,807. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- Roughly 267,330 people hold this job nationally, earning $102,760 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $102,760. Nothing is missing.
- Interstate variation for physical therapists is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $67,383 to $89,807. 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.
- 267,330 are employed nationally in physical therapists, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- Coverage for physical therapists is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Physical Therapists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $77,140 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $102,760 |
| Top tenth earn over | $135,140 |
| This salary | $102,760 |
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 Therapists
The national median for this job
$102,760around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $77,140 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $102,760 |
| Top tenth | $135,140 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Physical Therapists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | North Dakota · $85,330 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $124,190 |
| Spread | $38,860 |
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 | $105,810 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $108,886 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $111,250 | $87,094 | $89,807 |
| NM | $106,880 | $80,114 | $88,635 |
| AK | $115,280 | $89,929 | $88,413 |
| WY | $100,400 | $79,461 | $87,466 |
| AR | $99,010 | $75,279 | $87,019 |
| OH | $103,050 | $79,208 | $86,272 |
| MS | $99,990 | $75,265 | $86,223 |
| TN | $100,140 | $79,278 | $85,693 |
| TX | $105,810 | $83,267 | $85,688 |
| LA | $98,530 | $75,576 | $85,547 |
| KY | $100,710 | $76,272 | $84,309 |
| OK | $98,590 | $74,252 | $84,104 |
| SD | $92,660 | $74,016 | $84,019 |
| IN | $101,560 | $77,311 | $83,866 |
| IA | $97,560 | $74,368 | $83,779 |
| MO | $99,310 | $74,964 | $81,694 |
| WV | $96,600 | $73,253 | $81,599 |
| WI | $101,840 | $75,884 | $81,510 |
| AL | $97,290 | $73,203 | $81,363 |
| SC | $101,330 | $75,802 | $81,353 |
| NE | $97,090 | $73,419 | $81,237 |
| ID | $99,000 | $74,083 | $81,031 |
| KS | $98,290 | $72,781 | $80,899 |
| MI | $100,900 | $75,776 | $80,455 |
| NC | $99,910 | $75,639 | $80,348 |
| GA | $102,700 | $76,554 | $79,167 |
| PA | $101,380 | $77,038 | $79,014 |
| CA | $124,190 | $88,692 | $78,781 |
| IL | $105,250 | $77,808 | $78,710 |
| UT | $99,880 | $74,651 | $78,578 |
| AZ | $103,220 | $79,267 | $78,401 |
| ND | $85,330 | $68,455 | $77,287 |
| FL | $101,040 | $79,912 | $77,245 |
| MT | $91,450 | $69,359 | $76,857 |
| WA | $105,950 | $83,366 | $76,791 |
| MN | $102,010 | $75,181 | $76,390 |
| MD | $106,890 | $79,233 | $76,211 |
| NJ | $112,140 | $82,767 | $76,015 |
| VT | $97,970 | $73,396 | $75,952 |
| CO | $102,030 | $76,827 | $75,780 |
| ME | $99,720 | $73,495 | $75,693 |
| DE | $102,050 | $75,118 | $75,683 |
| NH | $99,850 | $79,074 | $75,062 |
| VA | $101,450 | $75,127 | $74,569 |
| CT | $104,360 | $77,236 | $74,488 |
| RI | $99,400 | $75,389 | $74,339 |
| MA | $103,790 | $76,977 | $71,118 |
| OR | $103,510 | $73,142 | $69,845 |
| NY | $100,660 | $74,746 | $69,449 |
| HI | $101,700 | $74,090 | $68,217 |
| DC | $101,640 | $74,663 | $67,383 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for physical therapists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $102,760, 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 therapists 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 Alaska, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $89,929.
- The price adjustment for physical therapists 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 $67,383. 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 therapists, with a national value of $102,760. 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 therapists 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 $89,929, in Alaska. 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 therapists 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.