Occupation / job
Physical Therapist Assistants
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 Assistants pays $68,380 at the midpoint, 37% above the $50,020 national figure. Premiums that size are rationed by something; find out what before the salary does your thinking for you.
National employment is 112,430. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
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.
We carry no verified training length for Physical Therapist Assistants — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
$18,860 separates the bottom quarter at $59,820 from the top quarter at $78,680, a ratio of 1.3x. In a band that tight, moving up inside Physical Therapist Assistants pays less than moving out of it would.
Even the bottom quarter of Physical Therapist Assistants earns $59,820 — $28.75 an hour and $9,800 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you would find it hard to keep pushing a patient who is in pain and would rather stop for the day.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 112,430 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
A 1.3x spread means the top quarter of Physical Therapist Assistants is not doing a different job from the bottom quarter, just a slightly better-paid version of the same one. Between $59,820 and $78,680 is the whole of the negotiation.
In cash terms the middle half of Physical Therapist Assistants runs $59,820 to $78,680 — $18,860 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $68,380.
The 75th percentile is $78,680. Reaching it from the $68,380 midpoint is $10,300 a year; reaching it from the $59,820 that the bottom quarter of Physical Therapist Assistants earn is $18,860.
The climb from $68,380 to $78,680 is $10,300; the drop to $59,820 is $8,560. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Physical Therapist Assistants and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Physical Therapist Assistants is $32.87 an hour. The quarters sit at $28.75 and $37.82, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
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 Assistants for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $68,380 describes them.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $68,380 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else