---
title: "Occupational Therapy Aide"
description: "Under close supervision of an occupational therapist or occupational therapy assistant, perform only delegated, selected, or routine tasks in specific…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-aide"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Occupational Therapy Aide

**Category:** Healthcare Support · **SOC code:** 31-2012 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 31-2012.00

Under close supervision of an occupational therapist or occupational therapy assistant, perform only delegated, selected, or routine tasks in specific situations. These duties include preparing patient and treatment room.

Also advertised as: Certified Occupational Rehabilitation Aide (CORA); Direct Service Professional (DSP); Direct Support Professional (DSP); Occupational Rehabilitation Aide; Occupational Therapist Aide (OT Aide); Occupational Therapy Aide (OT Aide); Rehabilitation Aide (Rehab Aide); Rehabilitation Services Aide.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $39,160 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $18.83/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $29,430 to $70,200, with the middle half between $35,920 and $46,780
- **Total US employment:** 4,310
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.6% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 63/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 4,310 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $29,430 |
| 25th | $35,920 |
| 50th (median) | $39,160 |
| 75th | $46,780 |
| 90th | $70,200 |
| Mean (average) | $44,110 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NC | $66,190 | $70,172 | 250 |
| NY | $46,220 | $42,828 | 250 |
| WA | $45,890 | $42,883 | 190 |
| NE | $44,980 | $49,921 | 90 |
| CT | $44,840 | $43,278 | 110 |
| NJ | $44,470 | $40,871 | Not published by BLS |
| CA | $43,480 | $39,270 | 330 |
| NM | $43,170 | $46,816 | 50 |
| MA | $40,160 | $37,974 | 90 |
| CO | $40,110 | $38,922 | 40 |
| DC | $39,620 | $36,051 | Not published by BLS |
| MI | $39,050 | $40,585 | 60 |
| MO | $38,890 | $42,822 | 110 |
| IN | $38,250 | $40,984 | Not published by BLS |
| GA | $38,090 | $39,556 | 200 |

12 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 27 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-aide/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/occupational-therapy-aide.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 4,400 in the 2025–2035 base year to 4,600 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 200 jobs, or +3.6%. About as fast as average: 3.6% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 600 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 36.8% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 28.4% |
| Some College Courses | 24.3% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 8.7% |
| First Professional Degree | 1.8% |

## What the work involves

- Prepare and maintain work area, materials, and equipment and maintain inventory of treatment and educational supplies.
- Encourage patients and attend to their physical needs to facilitate the attainment of therapeutic goals.
- Assist occupational therapists in planning, implementing, and administering therapy programs to restore, reinforce, and enhance performance, using selected activities and special equipment.
- Report to supervisors or therapists, verbally or in writing, on patients' progress, attitudes, attendance, and accomplishments.
- Observe patients' attendance, progress, attitudes, and accomplishments and record and maintain information in client records.
- Demonstrate therapy techniques, such as manual and creative arts and games.
- Adjust and repair assistive devices and make adaptive changes to other equipment and to environments.
- Supervise patients in choosing and completing work assignments or arts and crafts projects.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Service Orientation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Therapy and Counseling — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Realistic (R), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.00 |
| R — Realistic | 3.91 |
| C — Conventional | 3.72 |
| I — Investigative | 2.55 |
| E — Enterprising | 1.82 |
| A — Artistic | 1.69 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ISFJ | 78.6 |
| ESFJ | 75.9 |
| ESFP | 64.6 |
| ISFP | 62.6 |
| ENFJ | 57.6 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ, ESFJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Physical Therapist Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist-aide) — median $35,240
- [Occupational Therapy Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-assistant) — median $72,300
- [Physical Therapist Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist-assistant) — median $68,380
- [Psychiatric Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/psychiatric-technician) — median $45,130
- [Rehabilitation Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/rehabilitation-counselor) — median $46,850
- [Psychiatric Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/psychiatric-aide) — median $44,910
- [Home Health Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/home-health-aide) — median $35,800
- [Respiratory Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/respiratory-therapist) — median $82,280
- [Nursing Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nursing-assistant) — median $42,260
- [Licensed Practical Nurse](https://nuecareer.com/careers/licensed-practical-nurse) — median $64,400

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2025–2035 edition. https://www.bls.gov/ooh/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/occupational-therapy-aide