Patient Care Technician Salary in Texas 2026,
$37,500 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Texas figure is $37,500 a year, or $18.03 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 11.3% below the national median of $42,260. The band runs $30,620 at the 10th percentile to $47,500 at the 90th. The wage row is SOC 31-1131, Nursing Assistants, which is broader than the patient care technician title and includes nurse aides in long-term care and home settings alongside hospital-based technicians.

Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos at $38,550, barely ahead of Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington $38,530, Houston-Pasadena-The Woodlands $37,970, Wichita Falls $37,870 and Abilene $37,460. The whole state spans under eleven hundred dollars, so the metro table is not a useful decision tool here — the difference between a nursing home and a hospital assignment is worth far more than the difference between Austin and Abilene.

For most of it, yes, though not under the patient care technician title. Texas does not regulate that title at all. What it regulates is the certified nurse aide credential: a state-approved training programme, a competency evaluation and listing on the Health and Human Services Commission nurse aide registry are required to work as an aide in a Medicare- or Medicaid-certified facility. Hospitals frequently require the same registry listing plus their own competencies. Additional national patient care technician certifications are employer preferences rather than Texas requirements.

It is the most common one, and the reasoning holds up. The training is short, the HHSC registry listing is quick to obtain, and the work builds direct patient-care experience that Texas nursing programmes value in admissions. With about 12,490 openings a year in the state, pro-rated from the national figure, entry is readily available. The caution is that the occupation itself is not a career ladder — the band tops out at $47,500 — so the value is largely in what it leads to rather than in where it goes on its own.

Because the occupation's wage is set by long-term care economics, and Texas's reimbursement and staffing environment holds those rates down. A location quotient of 0.68 shows the state employs aides at about two-thirds the national rate, which in practice means higher patient loads per aide rather than higher pay per aide. Hospital work pays better than nursing home work everywhere, but the nursing home share of employment is large, and it is that share that pulls the state median down to $37,500 against a national $42,260.

It means Texas employs nursing assistants at about two-thirds the national rate relative to its total employment, and since patient need does not scale down with staffing decisions, the practical translation is more patients per aide. That is the single most important thing this number says about the job in Texas, and it is worth more attention than the wage gap: the same $37,500 buys a heavier assignment here than the national median buys elsewhere. It is also part of why turnover is high and why the opening flow is so large relative to growth.

The category mixes three quite different jobs — hospital patient care technician, nursing home aide and home health aide are all in or adjacent to this row, and they have different skill requirements, different shift patterns and different pay. The annualisation also assumes full-time equivalence in an occupation with a great deal of part-time and per-diem work. The $18.03 hourly median is the more reliable comparator, particularly for anyone weighing agency or per-diem shifts against a staff position.

Setting, first and by far. Moving from long-term care to a hospital is most of the distance from the $35,300 twenty-fifth percentile to the $43,070 seventy-fifth, and it also broadens the skill set into phlebotomy, EKG and point-of-care testing. Then unit acuity: emergency, dialysis, telemetry and operating room assignments pay above general floors. Then shift, since nights and weekends carry differentials that at this wage level are a meaningful percentage. And then tenure and preceptor status, which is roughly what the $47,500 ninetieth percentile describes.