Recreational Therapists
What the pay figures show
- California pays recreational therapists the most, $98,170. 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 Nevada wins, at $66,216. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For recreational therapists, California leads both nominally at $98,170 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 Nevada first at $66,216. 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
$61,960
People doing it
14,930
Highest paid
$98,170
CA
Best off, really
$66,216
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$40,990
Highest tenth
$100,420
Lowest, really
$35,996
KS
States with data
48
National average
$67,630
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $35,996 to $66,216.
- This is a small job: about 14,930 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- This job is not published everywhere — 48 jurisdictions have a figure, with $61,960 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. California tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation in recreational therapists pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $35,996 to $66,216, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 14,930 workers, recreational therapists is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- 48 jurisdictions carry a published median for recreational therapists. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Recreational Therapists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $40,990 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $61,960 |
| Top tenth earn over | $100,420 |
| This salary | $61,960 |
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 Recreational Therapists
The national median for this job
$61,960around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $40,990 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $61,960 |
| Top tenth | $100,420 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Recreational Therapists, state by state
The national median for this job
48states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $39,560 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $98,170 |
| Spread | $58,610 |
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 | $62,490 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $64,307 |
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 | $78,730 | $64,217 | $66,216 |
| CA | $98,170 | $72,855 | $64,713 |
| DC | $95,640 | $70,952 | $64,034 |
| NH | $82,280 | $66,714 | $63,329 |
| MN | $76,360 | $58,880 | $59,827 |
| WA | $77,860 | $63,605 | $58,588 |
| NE | $62,980 | $50,622 | $56,013 |
| ND | $58,370 | $49,080 | $55,413 |
| OH | $60,770 | $50,054 | $54,518 |
| TX | $62,490 | $52,391 | $53,914 |
| KY | $59,240 | $47,824 | $52,862 |
| VT | $63,380 | $51,033 | $52,810 |
| CO | $66,580 | $53,448 | $52,719 |
| MI | $61,700 | $49,384 | $52,434 |
| MO | $58,620 | $47,463 | $51,724 |
| IA | $56,140 | $45,767 | $51,559 |
| WI | $59,350 | $47,796 | $51,340 |
| AL | $57,360 | $45,801 | $50,907 |
| AZ | $62,610 | $51,324 | $50,763 |
| MD | $64,300 | $51,154 | $49,204 |
| PA | $58,940 | $47,729 | $48,953 |
| CT | $63,240 | $50,265 | $48,477 |
| VA | $61,270 | $48,648 | $48,286 |
| NY | $65,520 | $51,884 | $48,208 |
| OR | $66,530 | $50,363 | $48,092 |
| LA | $51,150 | $42,131 | $47,689 |
| UT | $56,640 | $45,170 | $47,546 |
| IN | $53,770 | $43,827 | $47,543 |
| TN | $51,910 | $43,890 | $47,441 |
| ME | $57,560 | $45,864 | $47,235 |
| FL | $57,980 | $48,767 | $47,140 |
| HI | $64,500 | $50,547 | $46,540 |
| OK | $50,480 | $40,970 | $46,406 |
| MT | $51,110 | $41,601 | $46,099 |
| MA | $62,820 | $49,835 | $46,042 |
| SD | $46,850 | $39,824 | $45,206 |
| NJ | $60,400 | $48,922 | $44,931 |
| NM | $49,210 | $40,572 | $44,887 |
| WV | $49,010 | $40,157 | $44,732 |
| NC | $51,030 | $41,655 | $44,249 |
| IL | $54,910 | $43,727 | $44,233 |
| ID | $49,720 | $40,348 | $44,133 |
| SC | $48,880 | $40,530 | $43,498 |
| GA | $52,010 | $41,974 | $43,406 |
| DE | $51,110 | $40,977 | $41,286 |
| AR | $42,670 | $35,345 | $40,858 |
| MS | $39,560 | $32,476 | $37,204 |
| KS | $40,010 | $32,384 | $35,996 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for recreational therapists as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $61,960, 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 recreational 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 $72,855.
- The price adjustment for recreational 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 — Kansas anchors the bottom at $35,996. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for recreational therapists, with a national value of $61,960. 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 recreational 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, $72,855. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for recreational 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.