Physical Therapist Salary in Virginia 2026,
$101,450 Median | BLS Data by City

Virginia physical therapists earn a median $101,450 a year, $48.78 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $84,110 and $118,670 and a full range of $75,720 to $132,860. That is 1.3% below the $102,760 national median, and the state's metro figures are unusually uniform.

Staunton-Stuarts Draft at $102,840, then Richmond at $102,700, Winchester at $102,670, Lynchburg at $102,450 and Charlottesville at $102,400 — a spread of about four hundred dollars across the whole state. Northern Virginia is not on the list because it is counted inside the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria multi-state metro rather than as a Virginia area.

Yes. Virginia participates in the Physical Therapy Licensure Compact, so a therapist holding a compact privilege can practise across member states without a separate application in each. In a state where a large share of the population lives within commuting distance of Maryland, the District of Columbia, West Virginia, North Carolina or Tennessee, that is a practical rather than a theoretical benefit.

Yes, within defined conditions set out in Virginia law and administered by the Board of Physical Therapy at the Department of Health Professions. Patients can be evaluated and treated without a referral subject to those limits, which matters commercially for outpatient clinics and is one of the factors behind the state's dense outpatient market.

Because the buyers are similar everywhere. Outpatient orthopaedic clinics, hospital rehabilitation departments and skilled nursing facilities operate on comparable reimbursement across the state, and the largest employers run standardised pay structures across their Virginia sites. With five metros within four hundred dollars of each other, the practical implication is clear: in Virginia, moving for physical therapy pay does not work — changing setting or specialty does.

The published band does not show productivity requirements, and in Virginia outpatient practice those requirements are what a therapist actually negotiates. Two jobs at the $101,450 median can differ by several patients a day, which is the difference between a sustainable career and burnout. The figure also excludes the student debt position of a doctoral-entry profession: a Virginia DPT graduate carrying substantial loans against a six-figure median has a different financial reality than the salary alone suggests.

Three places. Home health, which pays per visit and rewards efficiency and geographic tolerance, reliably sits above clinic salaries. Clinic and regional management, which adds administrative responsibility on top of a reduced caseload. And practice ownership, which is well represented in Virginia's outpatient orthopaedic market. Board specialty certification in orthopaedics, neurology or sports adds a step but is more useful as a route into those roles than as a direct raise, and together they are what reach the $118,670 seventy-fifth percentile and the $132,860 ninetieth.

It widens the market without a move. A Virginia therapist with a compact privilege can take assignments in member states, which makes travel therapy contracts practical and makes living in one state while working in another routine — relevant in the Washington suburbs, the Bristol area on the Tennessee line and the Hampton Roads to North Carolina corridor. It also increases competition for Virginia posts from therapists elsewhere, which is part of why Virginia's rates track the national figure so closely.