Therapist Hourly Pay Rates Examined (Part 2... Assistants!)
Thank you again to everyone who contributed to our survey.
We collected and analyzed responses from more than 50 Florida-based Therapy offices and you made this informational article possible.
Again, before we look at the data, I want to be clear about how this information was gathered. This is not a scientific poll or survey so the data is only as good as the collection method. The survey questions did not specify whether the Therapist was a Contractor or Employee so that will cause some outliers in the results. Finally, any size office could (and did) respond. That said, this article will examine Therapist Assistants only (SLPAs, COTAs, and PTAs). To see the breakdown for Full Therapists, please visit this article.
The chart below examines Therapist Assistants with 5 years of experience or less. PTAs, similar to PTs, seem to start higher than the other disciplines and stay consistently higher throughout their career. I was surprised to see very few assistants making below $20 per hour, especially since these are first jobs for many.
The chart below examines Therapists Assistants with 5-10 years of experience. While PTAs are still paid higher on average, the majority of all 3 disciplines seems to be between $26-$30.
The chart below examines Therapists Assistants with 10-15 years of experience. 90% of COTAs and PTAs are making between $26-$35 per hour while the SLPAs are still more distributed across all pay levels. Perhaps the additional supervisory requirements make it more difficult for SLPAs to consistently make as much as their counterparts.
The chart below examines Therapists Assistants with more than 15 years of experience. Not much change at the highest level of experience but it appears as though very few Therapists Assistants (15% or less) ever make more than $35 per hour.
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My Key takeaways by Discipline are:
SLP: Likely due to extra supervisory requirements, SLPAs tend to make less over the course of their career than their counterpart disciplines.
OT: COTAs seem to track closely with the PTAs, although early in their career they make slightly less on average.
PT: PTAs consistently start at a higher pay rate than any other discipline and maintain that rate advantage until about 15 years into their career.
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