Physical Therapist Assistant Salary in New York 2026,
$64,100 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New York figure is $64,100 a year, or $30.82 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $46,350 at the 10th percentile to $81,000 at the 90th and quartiles at $57,430 and $75,500. That is 6.3% below the national median of $68,380. The row is SOC 31-2021, Physical Therapist Assistants — an exact match, so the below-national result reflects the New York market rather than a mismatched code.

New York-Newark-Jersey City at $75,620, by a wide margin, then Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh $66,320, Albany-Schenectady-Troy $64,050, Glens Falls $61,740 and Syracuse $61,010. The city metro is the only one in the state above the national median of $68,380, which makes geography the dominant variable for this occupation in New York — unusually so compared with occupational therapy, where the metro table is almost flat.

The most likely explanation is utilisation. A location quotient of 0.52 across only 3,620 jobs means New York uses physical therapist assistants at half the national rate, which suggests the state's physical therapy sector delivers more care directly through licensed physical therapists. Where assistants are a smaller and less central part of the staffing model, they are also less likely to command a premium — and much of the remaining demand sits in skilled nursing and outpatient settings with administratively constrained rates.

No. New York does not participate in the physical therapy licensure compact, so a compact privilege held elsewhere confers no authority to practise here. A physical therapist assistant moving to New York applies to the State Education Department's Office of the Professions for a New York licence, satisfies the state's child abuse identification coursework requirement, and cannot begin work until the licence issues.

It is a genuine two-year commitment against a state median of $64,100 that sits below the national figure and below Arkansas, Kansas and Wisconsin. The honest case for it in New York rests on three things: the New York-Newark-Jersey City metro figure of $75,620, which is a real premium for anyone who can work that market; the upper band at $75,500 and $81,000, which is reachable with experience and setting choice; and the state's low utilisation, which leaves room for growth if payer pressure pushes New York toward the staffing model most other states already use. Outside the city market, the financial case is thin.

Something structural about how New York delivers rehabilitation. The state's occupational therapist location quotient is 1.15 — above the national rate — while its physical therapist assistant location quotient is 0.52, half of it. New York employs plenty of licensed therapists and comparatively few assistants. The most plausible reading is that New York's physical therapy sector, shaped by its payer mix and by practice regulation, delivers more treatment directly through licensed physical therapists than the national norm. For a PTA that has two consequences: fewer posts, and less bargaining power within the ones that exist, which is consistent with a median 6.3% below the national figure.

Because the downstate outpatient and orthopaedic private practice market is large, competitive and privately funded in a way the rest of the state's rehabilitation employment is not. New York-Newark-Jersey City publishes $75,620 against Syracuse's $61,010 — the widest proportional metro spread of any clinical occupation in this unit. Where the payer is a private outpatient practice competing for volume, the assistant is a productivity lever and is priced accordingly; where the payer is a skilled nursing facility on administratively set rates, the assistant is a cost line. The metro table is essentially a map of that distinction.

The band ends at $81,000, and the ninetieth percentile of an exact-match occupation is a meaningful ceiling rather than a soft one. Lead assistant roles, clinical instruction and home health caseloads with productivity components are what reach it. The route past it is not within the occupation at all: it is the physical therapist licence, which requires a doctoral-level programme and is licensed separately by the same State Board for Physical Therapy. Any PTA in New York planning a long career should know where the band stops and decide deliberately whether to stay inside it.