Best States for Physical Therapists in 2026: California Leads, but Pay and Opportunities Vary Widely

Across the top 10 states for physical therapists in 2026, LaborCove’s data shows substantial variation in both pay and employment levels, even among states that sit close together in the rankings. The highest-ranked state, California, combines the largest reported employment count with the highest Geography Score in this group, while Alaska illustrates how a relatively small employment base can still coincide with a high median salary. For career planning, this means the “best” state depends on whether a therapist prioritizes higher pay, a larger employment count, or alignment with LaborCove’s overall Geography Score. The rankings provide a structured, data-based view of these trade-offs but should be weighed alongside individual preferences and constraints that are outside the scope of this data.

At the national level, physical therapists have a reported median annual salary of $102,760. This provides a benchmark for understanding how state-level pay in the top 10 compares. National employment for physical therapists is listed at 267,330. This is the total employment figure across the country, rather than for any single state. The occupation’s projected employment growth rate is 10.9% nationally. This projection applies to physical therapists across the entire country and is not a state-specific or metro-specific growth rate.

California holds the #1 rank among the supplied states with a LaborCove Geography Score of 87.48. The next highest Geography Score in the top 10 is in Texas at 62.51, meaning California’s score is higher than Texas’s score. New York ranks #3 with a Geography Score of 58.71, which is lower than Texas’s 62.51 but higher than New Jersey’s 54.90 at rank #4. Florida at rank #5 has a Geography Score of 48.14, which is above Pennsylvania’s 46.52 at rank #6 and Ohio’s 45.78 at rank #7. At the lower end of the top 10 by Geography Score, Alaska has a score of 45.55 at rank #8, which is slightly higher than Massachusetts at 45.32 and Illinois at 45.31. These scores underscore that the ordering within the top 10 reflects fairly close Geography Scores outside of California’s notably higher value.

Within the top 10, California has a median annual salary of $124,190 for physical therapists, which is higher than the national median of $102,760. Alaska’s median salary of $115,280 is also above the national median and is higher than California’s Geography Score neighbor Texas, which reports a median salary of $105,810. Among the large-population states in this group, Texas at $105,810, New York at $100,660, and Florida at $101,040 all sit close to the national benchmark but differ from one another. Texas’s median salary of $105,810 is higher than New York’s $100,660 and Florida’s $101,040, while Florida’s median salary is slightly higher than New York’s. New Jersey’s median salary of $112,140 is higher than the national median and above nearby-ranked states Pennsylvania at $101,380 and New York at $100,660. Ohio’s median salary of $103,050 and Massachusetts’s $103,790 are each above the national median, while Illinois at $105,250 stands above the national figure and above Pennsylvania’s $101,380 within the lower half of the top 10.

Among the top-ranked states, California has the largest reported employment count for physical therapists at 26,580. This is also identified as the largest employment market in the supplied geographic data. Texas has an employment count of 21,870, which is smaller than California’s but higher than New York’s 20,940. Florida’s employment count of 16,290 is lower than New York’s 20,940 but higher than Pennsylvania’s 11,710 and Ohio’s 10,280. At the lower end of the top 10 employment counts, New Jersey reports 9,750 physical therapist jobs, which is slightly below Illinois at 9,800. Massachusetts has 6,850, and Alaska has the smallest employment count among these top 10 states at 680.

The data show that a higher salary does not always correspond to a higher LaborCove rank. For example, Alaska has a median salary of $115,280, which is higher than Texas’s $105,810, yet Texas ranks #2 while Alaska ranks #8. Similarly, New Jersey’s median salary of $112,140 is higher than New York’s $100,660, even though New York has the higher rank at #3 compared with New Jersey’s #4. Employment counts and salary levels also do not move in lockstep. California pairs the highest rank (#1) with the highest reported employment count in this list (26,580) and a median salary of $124,190. By contrast, Alaska combines the smallest employment count in the top 10 (680) with a median salary of $115,280 that is above the national median and above several higher-ranked states on this list. Within the middle of the ranking, Florida and Pennsylvania have relatively close Geography Scores—48.14 and 46.52, respectively—yet Florida has both a higher employment count (16,290 vs. 11,710) and a slightly different salary profile, with Florida’s median salary of $101,040 being slightly lower than Pennsylvania’s $101,380. These kinds of contrasts highlight why users may want to consider all three metrics together rather than focusing on a single measure.

LaborCove builds these rankings from authoritative labor-market data combined with its LaborCove Geography Score methodology. For each occupation, the platform aggregates state-level information including median annual salary, employment counts, and a composite Geography Score. The Geography Score is LaborCove’s summary measure for how each geography performs in the available data, and the rank order reflects these scores. In this article, only values that are explicitly supplied—salary, employment, Geography Score, rank, and the national projected growth rate—are used to describe differences between locations. Career decisions depend on many additional factors that are not measured here, such as individual financial needs, non-work preferences, or state-level licensing details. LaborCove’s rankings are therefore best treated as one structured input among several when comparing potential states for practice.