Physical Therapist Assistant Salary in Louisiana 2026,
$65,370 Median | BLS Data by City

Louisiana physical therapist assistants earn a median $65,370 a year, or $31.43 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $24,360 at the 10th percentile to $81,520 at the 90th. That is 4.4% below the national median of $68,380. The very low 10th percentile is an artefact of part-time and per-visit work being annualised as though it were full-year employment — it is not what a newly licensed full-time PTA earns in Louisiana.

New Orleans-Metairie, at $73,980, comfortably ahead of the field and above the national median. Slidell-Mandeville-Covington follows at $68,520, then Shreveport-Bossier City $66,550, Baton Rouge $66,510 and Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux $65,480. The New Orleans premium of roughly eight and a half thousand dollars over the state median is one of the larger metro gaps in Louisiana healthcare support work, and the North Shore markets are within commuting distance of it.

Yes, and there is no way around it. The Louisiana Physical Therapy Board licenses physical therapist assistants, requiring graduation from a CAPTE-accredited PTA programme, a passing score on the National Physical Therapy Examination for PTAs, and the board's jurisprudence requirement. Unlike dental assisting, a Louisiana clinic cannot train someone into the role on the job — the accredited two-year degree is a hard prerequisite.

Closely. Arkansas publishes $64,520, Arizona $64,650, Colorado $64,810, Illinois $65,240 and Indiana $65,280 — Louisiana's $65,370 sits at the top of that peer group, and its flat 3% income tax and low housing costs improve on several of them. Within Louisiana the more consequential choice is the New Orleans-Metairie market at $73,980 against the northern metros, where the wage is roughly seven thousand dollars lower but housing costs very much more so.

Because OEWS annualises every wage as though the worker was employed for the full year, and physical therapy support work has an unusually high incidence of part-time, per-visit and school-calendar arrangements. A PTA seeing a partial caseload at a competitive hourly rate still shows up as a low annual figure. The hourly median of $31.43 is the number to use for part-time comparisons; the annual band's lower reaches describe schedules, not skill levels.

That the occupation has a hard licence floor and a soft hours floor. Everyone in this row holds a Louisiana Physical Therapy Board licence earned through a CAPTE-accredited degree, so there is no unqualified low-wage tier — which is why the 25th percentile of $47,030 to the 75th of $76,800 describes a fairly normal professional progression. The $24,360 tenth percentile sits outside that logic entirely and is best read as a statement about employment patterns in Louisiana rehabilitation rather than about pay rates. Anyone using this page to negotiate should anchor on the median and the hourly figure, never on the bottom of the band.

New Orleans-Metairie's $73,980 is a genuine market premium, but it is measured against a cost base that the other Louisiana metros do not share. Housing, insurance — property insurance in particular, which is a serious and rising cost in south Louisiana — and commuting all consume part of that gap to the state median. Shreveport-Bossier City at $66,550 and Baton Rouge at $66,510 give up wage but not necessarily net position. The exception is Slidell-Mandeville-Covington at $68,520, which combines a North Shore cost base with access to the New Orleans market.

Setting and productivity model. Post-acute work — home health and skilled nursing — pays above outpatient orthopaedics in Louisiana, frequently on a per-visit basis, which is what places it at the $76,800 seventy-fifth percentile. That model rewards volume and absorbs travel costs the clinic-based PTA does not carry. Beyond that, contract and travel assignments filling rural Louisiana vacancies pay a premium for exactly the reason those vacancies exist, and clinical instructor arrangements with CAPTE programmes add a modest supplement rather than a step change.