Physical Therapist Salary in Oklahoma 2026,
$98,590 Median | BLS Data by City

A median $98,590 a year, or $47.40 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $78,690 and $110,820 and a full range of $68,330 to $128,000. That is 4.1% below the $102,760 national median, though the state's 75th percentile clears the national median by more than eight thousand dollars.

Enid at $113,190, by a wide margin — more than thirteen thousand dollars above Oklahoma City at $99,730, with Tulsa at $100,840 and Lawton at $98,590 in between. A small market topping the table is a reliable indicator of recruitment difficulty rather than of local prosperity.

Through the State Board of Medical Licensure and Supervision, which licenses physical therapists in this state rather than a standalone physical therapy board. You need a CAPTE-accredited DPT and a passing NPTE score, plus continuing education for renewal. The same board licenses physical therapist assistants, so the supervision rules governing your direction of assistants come from the same source.

Because it is hard to staff. Oklahoma employs physical therapists at 0.87 times the national rate per worker, and the shortfall concentrates outside Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Enid is a small north-central market that new graduates rarely target, so employers there have to bid above the metro rate to fill posts. The $113,190 figure is what recruitment difficulty looks like in a wage series, and it is a genuine opportunity for a therapist whose location is flexible.

More than in most states. Oklahoma employs physical therapist assistants at nearly twice the national rate while employing therapists below it, which means a great deal of hands-on treatment is delivered by assistants working under therapist direction. Practically, an Oklahoma therapist spends proportionally more time on evaluation, plan-of-care development and supervision, and less on direct treatment, than a therapist in a state with the opposite ratio. Whether that appeals is worth thinking about before accepting a post.

That in a state with a therapist shortfall, the market clears through wages in the places least able to attract staff. Enid at $113,190 against Oklahoma City at $99,730 is a thirteen-thousand-dollar difference in the same state under the same licence, and it runs opposite to cost of living — Enid is cheaper to live in than Oklahoma City. For a therapist willing to work outside the two metros, that is a real and unusually clean arbitrage: higher gross pay, lower housing cost, and a low state income tax rate on top. The trade is professional isolation and a narrower range of clinical settings, which is a genuine consideration rather than a trivial one.

Setting, which the median hides entirely. 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 pay on productivity and account for much of the distance to the $128,000 ninetieth percentile. The figure also excludes productivity bonuses and the sign-on incentives used to fill rural vacancies, which in Oklahoma are commonplace given a location quotient of 0.87.

Location, unusually — Enid at $113,190 against the metros is the single largest published lever, and it does not carry a cost-of-living penalty. Then setting: home health and contract post-acute work pay on productivity and occupy the top of the band. ABPTS specialty certification in orthopaedics, neurology or geriatrics is the credential employed practices pay for, and clinic or regional management is the leadership route toward the $110,820 seventy-fifth percentile and beyond. Oklahoma's low tax rate means each of those gains is retained more fully than in most states.