Physical Therapist Salary in Texas 2026,
$105,810 Median | BLS Data by City

Texas physical therapists earn a median $105,810 a year, $50.87 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $88,620 and $127,290 and a full range of $76,600 to $139,050. That is 3.0% above the $102,760 national median, and Texas takes no income tax out of it.

Midland at $118,450, then Longview at $113,980, Beaumont-Port Arthur at $113,700, Sherman-Denison at $110,750 and Amarillo at $109,800. Every one of them is a smaller Texas market paying above the statewide median of $105,810 — the classic signature of rural and industrial recruitment premiums in a profession whose graduates cluster in big cities.

Yes. Texas participates in the Physical Therapy Licensure Compact, which lets a therapist whose home licence is in another compact state obtain compact privilege to practise in Texas without applying for a full Texas licence. The Texas Board of Physical Therapy Examiners, which sits within the Executive Council of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Examiners, still administers the state licence itself and handles discipline and continuing competence.

No. Texas has no personal income tax and no local income tax, so a physical therapist at the state median of $105,810 pays nothing to the state. In a profession where salaries vary comparatively little between states, that tax treatment is frequently the single biggest determinant of take-home — and it is why the 3.0% nominal advantage over the national median understates Texas's real position.

Less so than in most states, because of the compact. A therapist with a compact-eligible home licence can practise in Texas under compact privilege; a therapist moving permanently applies to the Texas Board of Physical Therapy Examiners for full licensure, including the jurisprudence requirement Texas sets on its own practice act. The Executive Council of Physical Therapy and Occupational Therapy Examiners is the administrative body that processes it.

Because Texas's large metros do not need to bid. Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Austin absorb DPT graduates from a dense network of Texas programmes and offer the amenities that keep them, so wages there sit at or below the statewide median of $105,810. Midland at $118,450, Longview at $113,980, Beaumont-Port Arthur at $113,700, Sherman-Denison at $110,750 and Amarillo at $109,800 are all markets that must pay a premium to fill a post — the Permian and East Texas industrial economies, in particular, generate orthopaedic and occupational rehabilitation demand well out of proportion to their populations.

The Texas band is genuinely narrow — $76,600 to $139,050 — which means there is less headroom in this profession than the metro spread suggests. Getting from the median of $105,810 to the 90th percentile of $139,050 in Texas generally requires leaving straightforward clinical employment for ownership, home-health case rates or contract work. Salaried outpatient practice in a Texas metro rarely reaches the top of the band regardless of experience.

Three. Home-health and travel contracts pay per visit or per week rather than salaried, which is how a Texas therapist reaches the $127,290 seventy-fifth percentile without moving into management, and the Texas tax position makes the contract premium worth more here than the same rate elsewhere. Productivity bonuses in outpatient orthopaedics tie earnings to visit volume. And ABPTS clinical specialisation — orthopaedics, neurology, geriatrics — is what larger Texas systems use to justify a differential above the base scale.