Physical Therapist Assistant Salary in Utah 2026,
$61,980 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Utah figure is $61,980 a year, or $29.80 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 9.4% below the national median of $68,380. The band runs from $34,190 at the 10th percentile to $84,000 at the 90th, but the bottom decile largely reflects part-time and per-diem schedules rather than a low-paid full-time segment.

Yes. Utah participates in the Physical Therapy Licensure Compact, so a PTA holding a licence in another compact state can obtain a compact privilege to work in Utah without submitting a full licence application. That is a meaningful convenience for travel and contract assistants, and it works in the other direction too for Utah-licensed PTAs wanting to work elsewhere.

Salt Lake City-Murray at $64,990, then Logan $63,120, Provo-Orem-Lehi $61,320, Ogden $60,880 and St. George $60,350. The spread across the state is modest. What moves a Utah PTA's income more is the setting — outpatient clinic, skilled nursing, hospital or per-visit home health — and the number of days worked.

Nationally it is one of the fastest-growing occupations, with 22% employment growth projected through 2034, and Utah shares the drivers: an ageing population, the shift of orthopaedic and post-surgical rehabilitation into outpatient settings, and an active population generating sports and musculoskeletal caseload. Utah's own base is small — 970 jobs at a location quotient of 0.77 — so growth arrives as roughly 170 pro-rated openings a year.

Most likely because supply is adequate. Utah has PTA programme capacity, a young population entering healthcare careers and a compact arrangement that makes it easy for licensed assistants from other states to work here — all of which keeps employers from having to bid up. The flat 4.65% income tax and moderate housing costs recover part of the 9.4% gap in real terms, but they do not close it.

Part-time and per-diem work, not a low-paid tier doing the same job. The distance from the $34,190 tenth percentile to the $57,650 twenty-fifth is far too large to represent a wage difference between full-time assistants; it represents people working two or three days a week. Physical therapy is delivered in clinics with variable schedules, in skilled nursing facilities that flex staffing with census, and in home health paid per visit, and all three support genuinely part-time arrangements. Many PTAs use that flexibility deliberately. The practical consequence for anyone reading this page is that the annual figures at the bottom of the band say nothing about the hourly rate — a PTA comparing offers should be comparing the rate and the guaranteed days separately, because the published band conflates them.

More than it appears, particularly in a small market. Physical therapy licensure has historically been slow and state-specific, which made short-term and travel work in the profession administratively awkward. The Physical Therapy Licensure Compact allows a PTA licensed in a member state to obtain a privilege to practise in another member state without a fresh application, and Utah participates. In a state with only 970 PTA jobs that has two effects. It gives Utah employers access to a much wider labour pool when they need to fill a post quickly, which is part of why wages here have not been bid up despite fast national growth. And it gives Utah-licensed PTAs genuine mobility — including into higher-paying compact states — which is a real option for someone who finds the local ceiling of $84,000 constraining.

In the settings that pay for productivity rather than for presence. Home health paid per visit is the clearest example: rates per visit in Utah can carry an assistant toward the $71,380 seventy-fifth percentile and beyond, at the cost of unpaid drive time across long distances, mileage, and a documentation load that is heavier than clinic work. Contract and travel assignments are the other route, made administratively simple by the compact. Within employed settings, skilled nursing and inpatient rehabilitation generally pay above outpatient clinic work, and specialty caseload experience in orthopaedic, post-surgical and neurological rehabilitation is what employers pay differentials for. What does not reliably move the number is tenure in a single outpatient clinic.