Physical Therapist Salary in Hawaii 2026,
$101,700 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $101,700 a year, or $48.90 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 1.0% below the national median of $102,760. The middle half falls between $93,600 and $117,910 and the full band runs $78,630 to $123,280. Effectively, Hawaii pays this profession the national rate, which has to be read against the highest cost of living in the country.

Neither of the published markets, in any meaningful sense: Urban Honolulu reports $101,700 and Kahului-Wailuku on Maui $101,650 — a difference of fifty dollars. That is the flattest metro comparison in this unit, and it means an island move within Hawaii carries no pay consequence for a physical therapist, unlike for nurse practitioners or dental hygienists in the same state.

Through the Hawaii Board of Physical Therapy at the Department of Commerce and Consumer Affairs. You need a Doctor of Physical Therapy degree from an accredited programme and a passing national physical therapy examination score, with licensure by endorsement available if you are already licensed in another state. Because Hawaii has very limited local training capacity, most therapists practising here trained on the mainland and completed this step before arriving.

On the arithmetic it is a difficult proposition: national-rate pay in the most expensive state in the country. The $123,280 ninetieth percentile is the practical ceiling within the profession here. What partly offsets it is the Prepaid Health Care Act, which requires employer health coverage at twenty hours a week and raises the value of part-time and per-diem work, and the fact that clinic direction and private practice reach the $117,910 seventy-fifth percentile. But nobody should move to Hawaii for physical therapy pay.

It is a genuine contrast with nurse practitioners and dental hygienists in the same state, both of which show large Maui premiums. The most plausible explanation is that physical therapy rates here are set by a nationally standardised profession whose workforce is largely imported from the mainland, so employers on both Oahu and Maui are recruiting from the same distant pool at the same price. Where the shortage bites is in filling posts at all rather than in what they pay.

It flattens it and anchors it to the mainland. Hawaii has very limited physical therapy education capacity, so most of its roughly 950 therapists trained elsewhere and obtained Hawaii licensure to come. When both Honolulu and Maui employers are recruiting from the same national pool, they compete on the same terms and end up at the same price — which is exactly what a fifty-dollar metro gap looks like. The corollary is that Hawaii's physical therapy wage is not really a Hawaii wage at all: it is the national rate, imported along with the workforce, and it takes no account of the state's cost of living.

With about 950 therapists the sample is small, which makes percentile estimates less stable. The figure blends outpatient orthopaedic, hospital acute care, skilled nursing, home health and school-based practice, which pay differently — home health in particular often sits above the median. It reports wages and salaries, so private practice ownership income is under-represented. And it excludes the value of the Prepaid Health Care Act's coverage requirement, which is real compensation not visible in a wage number.

Setting first: home health and skilled nursing caseloads generally pay above outpatient clinic work, and that is the most reliable published lever. Clinical specialty certification second — orthopaedic, neurologic and geriatric specialisation. Clinic direction and management third, which is what the $117,910 seventy-fifth percentile describes. Private practice ownership fourth, reaching toward the $123,280 ninetieth percentile, though in Hawaii ownership brings the general excise tax on service revenue into the calculation. Island choice contributes nothing measurable, which is unusual for this state.