---
title: "Physical Therapist"
description: "Assess, plan, organize, and participate in rehabilitative programs that improve mobility, relieve pain, increase strength, and improve or correct…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist"
last-updated: "2026-08-23T15:56:39.581Z"
---

# Physical Therapist

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1123 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1123.00

Assess, plan, organize, and participate in rehabilitative programs that improve mobility, relieve pain, increase strength, and improve or correct disabling conditions resulting from disease or injury.

Also advertised as: Acute Care PT (Acute Care Physical Therapist); Doctor of Physical Therapy (DPT); Home Care Physical Therapist (Home Care PT); Inpatient Physical Therapist (Inpatient PT); Outpatient Physical Therapist (Outpatient PT); Pediatric Physical Therapist (Pediatric PT); Registered Physical Therapist (RPT); Therapist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $102,760 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $49.40/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $77,140 to $135,140, with the middle half between $86,160 and $121,160
- **Total US employment:** 267,330
- **Typical entry education:** Doctorate
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +10.9% over 2024–2034 (BLS EP, 2024–2034)
- **Annual job openings:** 13,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 52/100 — 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 267,330 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $77,140 |
| 25th | $86,160 |
| 50th (median) | $102,760 |
| 75th | $121,160 |
| 90th | $135,140 |
| Mean (average) | $105,280 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $124,190 | $112,166 | 26,580 |
| AK | $115,280 | $112,623 | 680 |
| NJ | $112,140 | $103,065 | 9,750 |
| NV | $111,250 | $111,273 | 2,030 |
| MD | $106,890 | $101,840 | 3,940 |
| NM | $106,880 | $115,907 | 1,330 |
| WA | $105,950 | $99,007 | 5,370 |
| TX | $105,810 | $109,018 | 21,870 |
| IL | $105,250 | $105,294 | 9,800 |
| CT | $104,360 | $100,724 | 4,060 |
| MA | $103,790 | $98,140 | 6,850 |
| OR | $103,510 | $100,144 | 3,210 |
| AZ | $103,220 | $102,526 | 5,170 |
| OH | $103,050 | $111,076 | 10,280 |
| GA | $102,700 | $106,654 | 6,780 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/physical-therapist.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 267,200 in the 2024–2034 base year to 296,400 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 29,300 jobs, or +10.9%. Much faster than average: 10.9% against 3.1% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 13,200 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2024–2034.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Doctoral or professional degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Doctoral Degree | 47.1% |
| Master's Degree | 38.3% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 8.3% |
| Associate's Degree (or other 2-year degree) | 6.3% |

## What the work involves

- Plan, prepare, or carry out individually designed programs of physical treatment to maintain, improve, or restore physical functioning, alleviate pain, or prevent physical dysfunction in patients.
- Perform and document an initial exam, evaluating data to identify problems and determine a diagnosis prior to intervention.
- Record prognosis, treatment, response, and progress in patient's chart or enter information into computer.
- Instruct patient and family in treatment procedures to be continued at home.
- Evaluate effects of treatment at various stages and adjust treatments to achieve maximum benefit.
- Confer with the patient, medical practitioners, or appropriate others to plan, implement, or assess the intervention program.
- Administer manual exercises, massage, or traction to help relieve pain, increase patient strength, or decrease or prevent deformity or crippling.
- Test and measure patient's strength, motor development and function, sensory perception, functional capacity, or respiratory or circulatory efficiency and record data.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.1 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.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Medicine and Dentistry — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 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), Investigative (I), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 5.91 |
| I — Investigative | 4.87 |
| R — Realistic | 4.33 |
| C — Conventional | 3.07 |
| E — Enterprising | 2.49 |
| A — Artistic | 2.17 |

### 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 | 63.8 |
| ISFP | 63.2 |
| ESFJ | 57.4 |
| ESFP | 55.2 |
| INFJ | 54.9 |

Best-fitting types: ISFJ, ISFP.

## Related occupations

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

- [Physical Therapist Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist-assistant) — median $68,380
- [Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation Physician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-medicine-and-rehabilitation-physician) — median $265,930
- [Occupational Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapist) — median $100,330
- [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
- [Occupational Therapy Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-aide) — median $39,160
- [Orthopedic Surgeon, Except Pediatric](https://nuecareer.com/careers/orthopedic-surgeon) — median $358,550
- [Clinical Nurse Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-nurse-specialist) — median $97,550
- [Pediatric Surgeon](https://nuecareer.com/careers/pediatric-surgeon) — median $559,030
- [Recreational Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/recreational-therapist) — median $61,960

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 30.3 Database, May 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, 2024–2034. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BLS OOH** — BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, 2024–2034 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 30.3 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/physical-therapist