Physical Therapist Salary in Georgia 2026,
$102,700 Median | BLS Data by City

The published Georgia figure is $102,700 a year, or $49.38 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $78,580 at the 10th percentile to $130,630 at the 90th. That is level with the national median of $102,760. The row is an exact SOC match — 29-1123, Physical Therapists — so unlike many state salary pages there is no broader occupational group diluting the figure.

Dalton, at $109,710, ahead of Macon-Bibb County $104,500, Rome $103,710, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell $103,440 and Brunswick-St. Simons $103,260. Atlanta is fourth of five. Small north-Georgia and middle-Georgia systems pay above the metro because they are recruiting into markets with few therapists and no lifestyle premium to offer, and the entire spread is under seven thousand dollars in any case.

Yes. The Georgia State Board of Physical Therapy, within the Secretary of State's Professional Licensing Boards Division, issues the PT and PTA licences. Entry requires a degree from a CAPTE-accredited programme and a passing score on the National Physical Therapy Examination, and the licence renews on a two-year cycle with continuing competence requirements. Nothing about specialisation is recorded by the state — board certification through the American Board of Physical Therapy Specialties is a private credential.

Yes, if the other state is also a PT Compact member. Georgia participates in the PT Compact, which lets a therapist whose home-state licence is unencumbered obtain a compact privilege to practise in Georgia without applying for a second full licence. If your home state is not a member, or your licence carries discipline, you go through the Georgia board's ordinary endorsement route instead. For travel and locum work into Georgia this is usually the single most consequential fact in the whole record.

It means the state withholding is the same wherever in Georgia you work — a flat 5.49% under the 2024 schedule, stepping down to 5.39% for 2026, with no local income tax layered on top. Because the metro medians run from $103,260 in Brunswick-St. Simons to $109,710 in Dalton, the state tax cannot be the reason to choose one Georgia posting over another. Housing cost and caseload mix decide it, and both favour the smaller markets that already pay above Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell's $103,440.

Because physical therapy wages are set by a national labour market for a nationally standardised credential. Every licensed PT in the country holds a doctorate from a CAPTE-accredited programme and has passed the same examination, and compact privileges make relocation cheap. That combination compresses interstate differences: the peer table shows Arizona $103,220, Ohio $103,050, Delaware $102,050, Colorado $102,030 and Minnesota $102,010 all sitting within about $1,200 of Georgia's $102,700. The states that break away from that cluster do so on cost-of-living adjustment, not on a different valuation of the work.

Thin supply and a captive patient base. Dalton is a manufacturing town with an ageing workforce and a meaningful occupational-injury caseload, served by a small number of outpatient and hospital-based clinics that must compete for therapists against Chattanooga and Atlanta alike. Its $109,710 metro median is what that competition costs. Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell's $103,440, by contrast, is set in a market with several DPT programmes feeding graduates directly into it, which is precisely the condition under which employers do not have to bid up.

As a setting-and-structure ladder rather than a seniority one. The distance from the median $102,700 to the 75th percentile of $120,610 is normally bought by moving into home health, travel contracts or rural coverage, or by taking on productivity-linked compensation in private outpatient practice — not by waiting. The 90th percentile of $130,630 is largely ownership and multi-site leadership. Because Georgia's state licence records none of this, the negotiation is with the employer alone, and the metro table is the strongest external anchor available.