Occupation / job
Recreational Therapists
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
Recreational Therapists pays $61,960 against $50,020 across all occupations — $995 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
14,930 people work as Recreational Therapists. That is enough for a functioning national market and not enough for a functioning local one — in most metros this is a few employers rather than a field you can move around inside.
Clinical practice suits people who can decide under uncertainty with a patient in front of them, and who are steady about the documentation, the shifts and the liability that come attached.
No verified preparation time is on file for Recreational Therapists. 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
A quarter earn below $50,240 and a quarter above $79,930: a 1.6x ratio, $29,690 between the ends. That is an ordinary working spread, which also means experience and location explain most of it and there is no shortcut through the middle.
The 25th percentile is $50,240, $220 above the $50,020 typical American job. A floor above the national midpoint is rare, and it is worth more than an equivalent amount of upside.
Avoid it if you cannot do nights, cannot carry medico-legal exposure, or need to be finished thinking about work when the shift ends.
There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 14,930 people employed as Recreational Therapists; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.
What the spread tells you
At 1.6x between $50,240 and $79,930 this is a normally shaped occupation. $61,960 is what the middle of Recreational Therapists earns after the years it takes to get there, which is not the same as what it offers you now.
Put in money rather than ratios: $50,240 at the 25th percentile, $61,960 at the midpoint, $79,930 at the 75th. $29,690 separates the quarter of Recreational Therapists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Between $50,240 and $79,930 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $61,960. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $17,970; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $29,690.
The climb from $61,960 to $79,930 is $17,970, against $11,720 down to $50,240. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Recreational Therapists is larger than the realistic downside.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $29.78 at the midpoint for Recreational Therapists, $24.15 at the 25th percentile and $38.42 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $61,960 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $61,960 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