Occupational Therapist Salary in Utah 2026,
$97,150 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $97,150 a year, or $46.71 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 3.2% below the national median of $100,330. The middle half falls between $85,380 and $104,040 and the full band runs $75,570 to $126,970. The long stretch from the 75th percentile to the 90th is where specialty practice and management sit.

St. George at $104,040, ahead of Salt Lake City-Murray $99,980, Logan $96,200, Ogden $95,940 and Provo-Orem-Lehi $95,860. About eight thousand dollars separates the table, and a small southern Utah market leading rather than the capital reflects the recruitment premium a rural employer must offer when the statewide workforce is only about 1,030 people.

Through the Utah Division of Professional Licensing at the Department of Commerce. You need an accredited entry-level occupational therapy programme, completed supervised fieldwork and a passing national certification examination score. Utah participates in the Occupational Therapy Licensure Compact framework, which is designed to let therapists practise across participating states without obtaining separate licences in each — worth checking if you work across state lines.

A location quotient of 0.57 means Utah employs the profession at little more than half the national rate, about 1,030 therapists. Limited local training capacity relative to the state's rapid population growth is the most likely explanation, alongside a comparatively young population that has historically generated less rehabilitation demand than older states. With 13.8% national growth projected and a fast-growing and ageing Utah population, the honest reading is an under-built market.

Hand therapy is the most established certified specialism and commands a premium in this state as elsewhere. Paediatric and early intervention practice is unusually well supported given Utah's high birth rate. Home health caseloads generally pay above outpatient clinic work, and neurological rehabilitation is the other route with genuine demand. Together with departmental management and private practice, those are what occupy the $104,040 seventy-fifth percentile to $126,970 ninetieth percentile stretch.

Because when a statewide workforce numbers about a thousand people, a rural employer competing for one of them has no local pool at all. St. George is a growing retirement and relocation destination in southern Utah with genuine rehabilitation demand, several hours from the Wasatch Front where nearly all the state's therapists live and train. To fill a post it must offer more than a Salt Lake employer does, and $104,040 against $99,980 is the result. The same pattern appears repeatedly across this batch in thin professional workforces — the recruitment premium always shows up furthest from where the workforce lives.

With about 1,030 therapists the sample is small and percentile estimates less stable. The figure blends acute hospital, skilled nursing, outpatient, home health, school-based and early intervention practice, which pay differently — home health typically above the median and school-based below it. It reports wages and salaries, so private practice income is under-represented. And it sits against Wasatch Front housing costs that have risen faster than the wage over the past decade.

Setting first: home health and skilled nursing caseloads generally above outpatient clinic and school-based practice, which is much of the distance from the $85,380 twenty-fifth percentile to the $104,040 seventy-fifth. Specialty certification second, with hand therapy the most established and paediatric practice unusually well supported here. Location third, and it points away from the Wasatch Front toward St. George at $104,040. Management and private practice fourth, which is what the $126,970 ninetieth percentile describes.