Physical Therapist Salary in Louisiana 2026,
$98,530 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $98,530 a year, or $47.37 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $77,740 and $109,650 and a full range of $60,150 to $127,640. That is 4.1% below the $102,760 national median, though the state's 75th percentile clears the national median by nearly seven thousand dollars.

Alexandria at $103,380 — the only published Louisiana metro above the national median — followed by Slidell-Mandeville-Covington at $101,980, New Orleans-Metairie at $100,530, Shreveport-Bossier City at $100,230 and Hammond at $98,930. A small central Louisiana market topping the table is a recruitment-difficulty signal rather than a prosperity one.

Through the Louisiana Physical Therapy Board, a dedicated board that also licenses physical therapist assistants and sets the supervision rules between the two. You need a CAPTE-accredited DPT, a passing NPTE score and the Louisiana jurisprudence requirement, with continuing education for renewal. The practice act also defines when a therapist may evaluate and treat without a physician referral.

Because the rural parishes pay less and there are a lot of them. Louisiana is a dispersed state with many small parish hospitals, nursing facilities and clinics operating on thin margins, and their wage levels pull the statewide figure below every published city. The practical implication for a therapist is that the state median of $98,530 describes a rural post better than a metro one, and any of the published metros represents an improvement on it.

Setting rather than title. Home health and contract post-acute work pay on productivity and routinely run well above employed outpatient rates, and travel assignments covering rural parish vacancies carry a premium on top. ABPTS board certification in orthopaedics, neurology or geriatrics and clinic or regional management are the employed routes toward the $109,650 seventy-fifth percentile and beyond.

Better than the 4.1% gap suggests. The move to a flat 3% income tax in 2026, from a structure topping out at 4.25%, leaves Louisiana with one of the lowest income tax burdens in the country and no local layer at all — at $98,530 that recovers most of the difference against the national median. Property taxes are low under the homestead exemption. The honest deductions are the nation's highest average sales tax, which is a modest share of this income, and coastal property insurance, which in the New Orleans and Houma areas has become a serious line item that no state tax comparison captures.

Setting dominates and is invisible. Outpatient orthopaedic, inpatient rehabilitation, skilled nursing, home health and school-based practice all sit inside this one number and differ by more than the state differs from the national median — home health and contract post-acute work paid on productivity account for most of the distance to the $127,640 ninetieth percentile. The figure also excludes productivity bonuses and the sign-on incentives used to fill rural parish vacancies, and it blends metro and non-metro employment that the metro table shows are quite different.

Setting first: home health, contract post-acute and travel work pay on a different basis and occupy the upper quartile. Location second, and simply being in any published metro is worth something, since all of them beat the state median — Alexandria at $103,380 most of all. Then ABPTS specialty certification and clinic or regional management. And the flat 3% income tax means each of those gains is retained more fully than in most states, which is worth factoring into any cross-border comparison with Texas, Mississippi or Arkansas.