Occupation / job
Physical Therapist Aides
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Physical Therapist Aides pays $35,240 where the typical American job pays $50,020 — $14,780 a year short, or $7.10 an hour. That is a liveable wage in a cheap state and a difficult one in an expensive city, and nothing about the national figure tells you which you would be in.
Employment stands at 48,150. Physical Therapist Aides is common enough to be recruited for continuously and specific enough that the experience travels — the combination that makes changing employer a working pay rise.
Therapy assistant roles suit people who like watching someone regain a capability over weeks, and who are comfortable being the person who insists on the repetitions.
No verified preparation time is on file for Physical Therapist Aides. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
$8,400 separates the bottom quarter at $30,410 from the top quarter at $38,810, a ratio of 1.3x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Physical Therapist Aides pays less than moving out of it would.
The bottom quarter of Physical Therapist Aides earns under $30,410 — $19,610 below the $50,020 national midpoint, or $14.62 an hour. A floor that low means the occupation cannot be judged on its median alone; a quarter of the people in it are somewhere else entirely.
Avoid it if you would find it hard to keep pushing a patient who is in pain and would rather stop for the day.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 48,150 figure counts people already working as Physical Therapist Aides, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x ratio from $30,410 to $38,810 makes $35,240 a dependable planning number. Dependable is the whole offer here — there is not much room above it.
The middle half of this field earns between $30,410 and $38,810. That is $8,400 of range, with $35,240 sitting inside it as the point half the field is above and half below.
The 75th percentile is $38,810. Reaching it from the $35,240 midpoint is $3,570 a year; reaching it from the $30,410 that the bottom quarter of Physical Therapist Aides earn is $8,400.
The midpoint sits high inside its own range: $4,830 above the $30,410 bottom quarter but only $3,570 below the $38,810 top quarter. Most of the distance in Physical Therapist Aides is spent climbing out of the bottom, and once you are past the middle there is not much further to go.
Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $14.62 at the bottom quarter, $16.94 at the midpoint, $18.65 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Physical Therapist Aides for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $35,240 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Physical Therapist Aides, the hourly figure is $35,240 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else