Respiratory Therapist Salary in Alabama 2026:
$66,150 Median

A median $66,150 a year, or $31.81 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with the middle half between $57,480 and $76,920 and a full range of $50,250 to $81,030. That is 19.6% below the $82,280 national median, and even the state's 90th percentile falls just short of the national median for the occupation.

Mobile at $79,490, followed by Montgomery at $76,920 and Daphne-Fairhope-Foley at $74,650. Birmingham at $67,480 and Anniston-Oxford at $66,740 trail by twelve to thirteen thousand dollars. The Gulf Coast paying substantially more than the state's largest medical centre is the defining feature of this market.

Through the Alabama State Board of Respiratory Therapy, a dedicated board rather than a division of a medical or nursing board. You need a degree from a CoARC-accredited respiratory care programme and NBRC credentialing — CRT at entry, RRT as the advanced credential — followed by the board's licence application and continuing education for renewal.

Supply and competition. The Mobile and Baldwin County market has two large hospital systems competing for a comparatively small therapist pool, a high chronic respiratory disease burden along the Gulf Coast, and no local training pipeline of the size Birmingham's has. Birmingham, by contrast, is where Alabama's respiratory care graduates concentrate, which gives its employers less reason to pay a premium. The result is Mobile at $79,490 against Birmingham at $67,480 — a difference no credential in this occupation will match.

The licence recognises both the CRT and the RRT, but Alabama hospitals hire at the registered level in practice and treat it as the standard. The RRT is what opens critical care, neonatal and transport assignments — the roles at the $76,920 seventy-fifth percentile and above. A therapist working at CRT level should treat completing the RRT as the first priority, second only to considering whether the Gulf Coast market is an option.

On these numbers, more than almost any other single decision in this unit. Mobile at $79,490 against Birmingham at $67,480 is over twelve thousand dollars — nearly a fifth of the Birmingham figure — and Birmingham additionally levies an occupational tax on wages earned in the city, which widens the real gap further. Coastal housing in Baldwin County is more expensive than Birmingham's, which absorbs part of it, but Mobile itself is not, and Alabama's property taxes are the lowest in the country statewide. For a respiratory therapist whose location is flexible, this is the clearest arbitrage in the Alabama unit.

Differentials, and the shape of the band. Night, weekend, holiday and on-call premiums are a substantial share of what Alabama respiratory therapists actually take home and are excluded from a base annual median — a therapist on a permanent night rotation earns meaningfully more than this figure suggests. The band also blends acute hospital work with sleep laboratory, home care and durable medical equipment roles, which pay differently. And with only about 2,350 therapists statewide, read the percentile ladder as a reliable shape rather than a precise scale.

Location first, and unusually so — Mobile, Montgomery or Daphne-Fairhope-Foley against Birmingham is worth more than any credential here. Then the RRT if you hold only the CRT, since Alabama hospitals hire on it. Then specialisation: ACCS for adult critical care, NPS for neonatal and paediatric, and ECMO or transport team membership, which are what reach the $76,920 seventy-fifth percentile and the $81,030 ninetieth. Charge therapist and clinical educator roles are the management route, and shift differentials should be negotiated explicitly since they sit outside the published wage.