Respiratory Therapist Salary in New York 2026,
$107,810 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New York figure is $107,810 a year, or $51.83 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $81,270 at the 10th percentile to $131,500 at the 90th and quartiles at $95,690 and $126,880. That is 31.0% above the national median of $82,280 — the largest clinical premium in this New York unit. The row is SOC 29-1126, Respiratory Therapists, an exact match to the occupation.

New York-Newark-Jersey City at $110,490, then Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh $106,910, Binghamton $103,200, Kingston $95,170 and Utica-Rome $91,610. Every one of those is above the national median of $82,280, which is unusual — in most occupations at least one upstate New York metro falls below the national figure. The premium here is genuinely statewide.

Yes. The State Education Department's Office of the Professions licenses respiratory therapists through its State Board for Respiratory Therapy, requiring an approved programme and the national credentialing examination. New York also licenses respiratory therapy technicians as a separate, narrower credential. There is no interstate compact for this profession that New York participates in, so a therapist licensed elsewhere applies to New York directly and cannot begin work before the licence issues.

Because this is a hospital-employed occupation on structured pay scales. The 75th percentile of $126,880 and the 90th of $131,500 are close together because the highest-paid respiratory therapists in New York are senior clinicians and supervisors on defined salary steps rather than people with individually negotiated packages. Practically, that means the ceiling is visible and attainable — but also that beyond a certain point in this profession, further earnings growth in New York generally requires changing role rather than accumulating seniority.

The data is favourable. A 31.0% premium over the national median, every published metro above the national figure, and a location quotient of 0.81 indicating the state employs fewer of these clinicians than its size would suggest — that is a shortage market, and it has been persistent. The counterweights are the narrow education pipeline, the fact that New York does not accept out-of-state licences without its own application, and the compressed top of the band, which caps the long-run trajectory earlier than nursing does.

That New York's respiratory therapy workforce is smaller than the state's size would predict and is being bid for. Two supply constraints sit behind it. The first is education: approved respiratory therapy programmes are far less numerous than nursing programmes, so the domestic pipeline into the credential is narrow everywhere and particularly so in a state with New York's healthcare scale. The second is licensure portability. New York does not participate in an interstate compact for this profession, so a therapist in a neighbouring state cannot simply respond to the higher wage — they have to apply to the Office of the Professions and wait. A market where price rises but quantity does not follow is a market with a supply barrier, and New York has two.

Carefully, because the spread is narrow and the cost differences are not. New York-Newark-Jersey City at $110,490 is only modestly above Kiryas Joel-Poughkeepsie-Newburgh at $106,910 and Binghamton at $103,200, while a New York City resident additionally pays 3.078% to 3.876% city income tax on top of a state rate reaching 10.9%. Utica-Rome at $91,610 and Kingston at $95,170 are the lowest published figures in the state but sit well above the national median of $82,280 in markets with far lower housing costs. For this occupation the upstate proposition is strong, and the data supports saying so plainly.

SOC 29-1126 is an exact match for the occupation, which removes the composition problem that affects most pages on this site — but it does not separate settings. Acute hospital respiratory care, sleep diagnostics, home care and skilled nursing all sit on this row, and they pay differently. The compressed top of the band suggests hospital scales dominate, which is consistent with where the work is, but a therapist considering a home care or diagnostics role should not assume the $107,810 median applies to it. The 7,010-job workforce is also small enough that the percentile estimates carry more sampling uncertainty than a larger occupation's would.