Ranked on travel PT contracts, from ProTherapy’s current open book. 22 states have enough live contracts to report a median. Updated 2026-09-09.
Every “highest paying states for travel therapy” list you have read ranks all 50. This one ranks 22, because those are the only states where we currently hold at least 5 live travel PT contracts — enough to report a median without inventing one.
That constraint is the article. The states with the least data are exactly the states other lists are most confident about.
Median advertised weekly gross for travel PT contracts, minimum 5 live contracts. Ranked by median, then by contract count, so the better-evidenced state wins a tie.
| State | Contracts | PT median weekly gross | Range |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Hampshire | 9 | $2,770 | $2,130 – $2,860 |
| Nevada | 10 | $2,700 | $2,280 – $2,770 |
| California | 52 | $2,630 | $2,130 – $3,210 |
| Arizona | 12 | $2,630 | $2,340 – $2,630 |
| New Mexico | 7 | $2,630 | $2,130 – $2,770 |
| Alaska | 5 | $2,630 | $2,340 – $3,800 |
| Montana | 7 | $2,480 | $2,130 – $2,770 |
| Oregon | 7 | $2,450 | $2,130 – $2,630 |
| Washington | 17 | $2,340 | $2,130 – $2,920 |
| Pennsylvania | 13 | $2,340 | $2,130 – $2,480 |
| Alabama | 12 | $2,310 | $2,130 – $2,340 |
| Texas | 6 | $2,310 | $2,130 – $2,480 |
| Virginia | 25 | $2,280 | $2,130 – $2,630 |
| Illinois | 18 | $2,280 | $2,130 – $2,920 |
| Michigan | 5 | $2,280 | $2,130 – $3,070 |
| Florida | 8 | $2,190 | $2,130 – $2,480 |
| New Jersey | 28 | $2,130 | $2,130 – $2,680 |
| Maryland | 17 | $2,130 | $2,130 – $2,860 |
| Massachusetts | 14 | $2,130 | $2,130 – $3,070 |
| Kansas | 9 | $2,130 | $2,130 – $2,630 |
| Indiana | 6 | $2,130 | $2,130 – $2,450 |
| South Carolina | 6 | $2,130 | $2,130 – $2,340 |
New Hampshire tops the table on 9 contracts. California sits further down on 52.
A 9-contract median is one strong posting away from moving $200. A 52-contract median is not. If you are choosing where to look for your next assignment, California is telling you something durable; New Hampshire is telling you what 9 contracts happen to look like this week.
We publish both numbers together for exactly this reason. A ranked list that shows you the rank but hides the sample size is asking you to trust a number it has not shown its working for.
Our book has travel PT contracts in 46 states. Only 22 have 5 or more. That leaves 24 states with between one and four live PT contracts, and for those we report nothing.
The exclusion has teeth. The single highest-paid travel PT contract in our entire book right now sits in a state with four contracts — below the threshold, so that state does not appear above, and its headline number is not presented as what the state “pays”. One contract is not a market rate.
If you want to work in one of those states, the useful takeaway is not a pay figure — it is that supply is thin there right now, which cuts both ways. Thin supply can mean a facility is willing to pay to fill a hard vacancy. It can also mean there is simply nothing to take this month.
Look at the range column rather than the median. 19 of the 22 ranked states floor at $2,130 — the bottom of our PT range — because SNF contracts cluster there and SNF is 65% of our PT book.
What separates states is the ceiling. Alaska reaches $3,800, the highest figure in the table. But look at Massachusetts: it sits at the very bottom of this ranking on median — $2,130, level with the floor — and still reaches $3,070. A state’s median tells you where its contracts cluster. Its ceiling tells you what is actually available to chase, and the two can point in completely different directions.
Gross is not take-home, and a high-gross state can net less. State income tax and what housing actually costs at the assignment both bite, and two contracts that look far apart on this page can land much closer together once both are paid. We have not modelled state-by-state net pay here, and this page should not be read as implying we have.
These are advertised weekly gross figures from one agency’s live book on one date — 352 live travel PT contracts inside a book of 875 — not a national survey, and not advice about where to take a contract.
The same book, cut two other ways. This page ranks states on PT contracts only. For median weekly gross across PT, OT, SLP, PTA and COTA, and by practice setting, see the monthly Travel Therapy Pay Index. And for why a state median is a weaker guide than it looks — the spread inside a single state is usually wider than the gap between two states — see Why State Pay Averages Mislead Travel Therapists.