Average Travel PT Salary (2026 Data)

Travel physical therapist listings in the United States post an average of $2,268¹ a week, before tax and including housing and meal stipends. That is 12%² more than the $2,025² a week that the average US physical therapist earned in base wages in May 2025, staff and agency therapists combined.³ A week at the standard federal per diem, the tax-free ceiling in areas without their own rate, comes to $1,246² through September 30, 2026, and stipends stay tax-free only for a therapist who keeps a tax home.⁴

No official count separates travel PTs from other physical therapists, so the sections below set job listings and contract data beside the official wage for the whole occupation.³ The picture changes from state to state: in New Jersey the posted travel average is below the state's average PT base wage.^{5 6} The average PT's pay has lost 10%² to inflation since 2015, and pipeline welders have a travel allowance of $165⁷ a day written into their national contract.

What travel PTs are paid per week

Travel pay is quoted by the week, and the week is a package: a taxable hourly wage plus housing and meal stipends, sometimes with a bonus, all before tax. Across 41,067¹ travel PT listings posted in the last seven days, the mean package is $2,267.90¹ a week and the median $2,241.60¹. These are offers, not paychecks, and the count is of listings, not of therapists.¹

The middle half of listings pays between $2,021.52¹ and $2,489.31¹ a week. The top tenth starts at $2,711.00¹, 1.44² times the $1,883.56¹ at which the bottom tenth ends. A second sample, the live contracts of one travel therapy staffing agency, puts the median PT contract at $2,280⁸ a week, within 2%² of the listings median.

Per contract and per year

A 13-week contract at the average posted rate comes to $29,483² before tax, and at the agency sample's median to $29,640².^{1 8} Multiplied by 52, the average weekly package gives $117,931², but that is an upper bound, not an annual salary: it assumes a therapist is on contract every week of the year, while weeks between contracts are unpaid. The weekly figure also mixes taxable wages with stipends that may be tax-free, so it does not compare line for line with a staff salary.

How the listings spread

Listings cluster tightly. 12,225¹ of them, 30%², fall in one band between $2,004 and $2,261 a week, and 89%² sit between $1,747 and $2,775. Fewer than 1%² post under $1,490, and the single highest listing reaches $4,830¹ a week; the band edges are those of the chart below.¹

How travel PT pay moved since 2021

Monthly averages of posted pay go back to June 2021, when the mean travel PT listing offered $1,745¹ a week. By September 2026 it was $2,260¹, 30%² higher in current dollars. Most of the rise came early: the mean passed $2,000 in July 2022 ($2,013¹) and $2,100 in April 2023 ($2,101¹). Since then the monthly mean has stayed between $2,099¹ and $2,272¹, the peak in December 2025, and September 2026 ended $12² below that peak.

One month stands out: in January 2023 the mean fell to $1,957¹ while the median rose to $2,022¹, so the typical listing did not drop.

PTA listings rose by the same 30%², from $1,202⁹ to $1,563⁹ a week, and September 2026 is the highest month in their series.⁹

The travel physical therapist average salary in 2024

Averaged over its 12 months, posted travel PT pay in 2024 was $2,142.00² a week, or $111,384² over 52 weeks as an upper bound.¹ It rose to $2,210.75² in 2025, 3.2%² more. Travel PTA listings averaged $1,484.83² a week in 2024 and $1,504.92² in 2025.⁹ Across all travel therapy listings the 2024 average was $2,062.83².

Travel physical therapist salary vs. the average

The average that travel pay is measured against is the wage of all employed physical therapists, staff and agency therapists combined. In May 2025 their mean wage was $105,280³ a year, $50.62³ an hour, and their median $102,760³; per week the mean comes to $2,025². That wage is straight-time pay only; it leaves out per diem, stipends, overtime premiums and shift differentials.³

Set side by side, the average travel listing posts $243² a week more than the average PT earned in May 2025, or 12%² more. Against posted pay for permanent PT jobs on the same job board, $107,622¹ a year or $2,070² a week, the travel margin is about 10%². The table puts four measures in one place for PTs and PTAs; each row measures something different, so the rows are not a ranking.

Agency-employed PTs

The closest official group to travel PTs is physical therapists on the payroll of temporary help agencies, which place both traveling and local therapists. In May 2025 there were 3,480¹¹ of them, 1.3%² of all PT jobs, with a mean base wage of $42.18¹¹ an hour: $8.44² less than all PTs, or 17%² below them. Agency PTs earned less per hour than all PTs in every year from 2015 to 2025, as the chart shows.¹¹ Stipends are not in that base wage; the average posted travel package is 34%² above it.

The agency line also jumps around, because it rests on a few thousand jobs. Its mean fell to $35.78¹² an hour in 2021 and to $38.40¹³ in 2024, years in which the all-PT wage kept rising.

Where staff PTs earn most

For the average PT, the setting matters. Among industries with at least 1,000 PT jobs, outpatient care centers paid the highest mean in May 2025, $125,230¹¹ a year, and home health care services paid $118,250¹¹ across 30,920¹¹ jobs. Offices of other health practitioners, which include therapists' own practices and employ 103,680¹¹ PTs, paid $97,620¹¹, so a home health PT earned 21%² more on average. Employment services, the agency sector, ranks last at $89,040¹¹, $36,190² below outpatient care centers.

Pay also spreads widely within the occupation. In May 2025 the top tenth of PTs earned at least $135,140³ a year and the bottom tenth at most $77,140³, 1.75² times apart; for PTAs the same two points were $89,510³ and $47,750³.

Posted travel pay runs 42%² above the staff PT wage in Montana and 4%² below it in New Jersey.^{32 5 6}

Travel PT pay by state

Among states with at least 100 listings, posted travel PT pay is highest in Alaska, at $2,653.88³³ a week across 604³³ listings, and lowest in Tennessee, at $1,929.35³⁴: a gap of $725² a week, or 38%². After Alaska come Idaho ($2,555.80³⁵), Montana ($2,549.51³²) and Nebraska ($2,517.91³⁶). California, the state with the most listings (4,444³⁷), posts $2,494.35³⁷. The map covers every state with data; Utah, Rhode Island and Arkansas rest on fewer than 100 listings each, and Indiana has none.

The ranking below keeps only the 47³⁸ areas with at least 100 listings each, so a handful of contracts cannot put a state at the top or the bottom.

Staff wages follow a different map. The average PT earns the most in California, $122,580⁶ a year, and the least in North Dakota, $92,480⁶, a gap of $30,100². Idaho, Montana and Nebraska, where travel listings post the most after Alaska, pay their staff PTs between $93,440⁶ and $96,830⁶ a year.

Where travel packages beat staff pay most

Set against each state's average PT base wage, the travel margin is mostly widest where staff pay is low. In Montana, where the average PT earns $93,440 a year,⁶ posted travel pay is 1.42² times the staff weekly wage;³² Idaho and Nebraska follow at 1.37² each.^{35 36} At the other end, New Jersey's posted travel average of $2,111.87⁵ a week is below the state's staff PT wage of $2,203² a week, a ratio of 0.96². In California, where staff PTs are paid the most, travel listings post only 5.8%² more ($2,494.35³⁷ against $2,357² a week).⁶ The ratio compares a posted package that includes stipends with a base wage, so it measures the travel margin as advertised, not take-home pay.

A second agency's state ranking

One travel therapy staffing agency ranks states by the median weekly pay of its open PT contracts, counting only states with at least five. New Hampshire comes first at $2,770⁸ a week on nine contracts, then Nevada at $2,700⁸; four states tie at $2,630⁸, Alaska and California among them. California, with 52⁸ contracts, is the only large sample in the list; the others rest on 5 to 17 contracts, so a single contract can move a state's median.

What travel PTAs are paid

Physical therapist assistants enter the job with an associate's degree rather than a doctorate³⁹, and their travel pay sits well below the PT package. Travel PTA listings post a mean of $1,556.78⁹ a week across 9,037⁹ listings, with a median of $1,538.50⁹: $711² a week less than travel PT listings, or 69%² of the PT package. A 13-week contract at that rate is worth $20,238² before tax. The agency contract sample puts the PTA median at $1,460⁸ a week.

Against their own occupation's wage, though, travel PTAs gain more in percentage terms than PTs do. All employed PTAs averaged $68,730³ a year in May 2025, $1,322² a week, so travel listings post 18%² more. Posted pay for permanent PTA jobs on the same job board is $74,857⁹ a year.

PTA pay by state

Among states with at least 100 PTA listings, California posts the highest travel PTA pay, $1,754.09⁴⁰ a week, and New York the lowest, $1,333.72⁴¹. Measured against each state's average PTA wage, South Dakota shows the widest margin, 1.41² times the staff wage,⁴² while New Jersey, as for PTs, falls below 1 at 0.96².^{43 6}

Staff PTA pay depends on the setting too. Home health care services paid the highest PTA mean in May 2025, $80,770¹¹ a year, while offices of other health practitioners, the biggest PTA employer with 50,830¹¹ jobs, paid $63,700¹¹.

Pay by therapy profession and setting

Travel pay is nearly flat across the three therapist professions. Speech-language pathologist listings post a mean of $2,271.62⁴⁵ a week, PT listings $2,267.90¹ and occupational therapist listings $2,256.33⁴⁶, a spread of about $15². The average across all travel therapy listings is lower, $2,145.32¹⁰ a week, and PTA listings sit furthest down.

A staffing agency's contracts show the same order by discipline: a median of $2,280⁸ a week for PTs and for occupational therapists alike, $2,220⁸ for speech-language pathologists, and $1,460⁸ for PTAs and occupational therapy assistants alike.

By setting, home health and school contracts carry the highest median, $2,480⁸ a week, and skilled nursing facilities the lowest, $2,130⁸. Skilled nursing is also where most of the work is: 690⁸ contracts, against 105⁸ in outpatient settings and 69⁸ in inpatient care. The school median rests on five contracts, and a contract listed under two settings counts in both.

So how much of a $2,268 week is wages at all?

Stipends, per diem and the tax home

The federal per diem ceiling

The stipend part of a travel package has a federal ceiling. An allowance up to the federal per diem rate stays off the wage line of the worker's W-2, while any amount above it must be reported as wage income.⁴ Through September 30, 2026, the standard rate for places without a rate of their own is $110⁴⁷ a night for lodging and $68⁴⁷ a day for meals and incidental expenses: $178² a day, or $1,246² a week. From October 1, 2026, standard lodging rises by $3 to $113⁴⁸, taking the day to $181² and the week to $1,267², and 295⁴⁸ non-standard areas keep higher rates of their own.

The standard lodging rate has risen from $89⁴⁹ in fiscal 2016 to $113⁴⁸ in fiscal 2027, 27%² in eleven years, and its biggest single step came in fiscal 2024, from $98⁵⁰ to $107⁵¹. A straight line through those years reaches about $162² a night by fiscal 2050: our calculation, not a forecast.

Per diem by state

In costlier places the ceiling is higher. Averaged over each state's listed destinations, with seasonal rates weighted by days, the fiscal 2026 lodging plus meals rate is highest in the District of Columbia, $325.73⁵⁸ a day or $2,280.11² a week, followed by Wyoming at $297.79⁵⁸ and Idaho at $279.40⁵⁸. Arkansas has the lowest state average, $182.00⁵⁸, barely above the standard day. Counties without a listed destination use the standard rate, so these averages describe the listed destinations, not every town in a state.

Employers can also use a simpler form of the ceiling, the high-low method: one daily rate for high-cost localities and one for everywhere else in the continental US. For fiscal 2026 the two rates are $319⁵⁹ and $225⁵⁹ a day. From October 1, 2026 they rise to $329⁶⁰ and $230⁶⁰, of which $86⁶⁰ and $74⁶⁰ are for meals and incidental expenses.

When stipends are taxed

Stipends stay tax-free only when three points hold:⁴

• The therapist has a tax home, a regular place of business or a place where they regularly live, and works away from it. Without one the therapist is an itinerant, the tax home is wherever they work, and every stipend is taxable.⁴
• The assignment is temporary: realistically expected to last, and actually lasting, one year or less. An assignment expected to run longer is indefinite.⁴
• The allowance stays within the federal rate. Any amount above it is reported as wage income.⁴

Being away from home means leaving the general area of the tax home for longer than an ordinary day's work and needing sleep or rest there.⁶⁵ A therapist who fails these tests can still see the same weekly package, but a larger share of it is taxed.

The long view: PT wages, jobs and inflation

The median PT wage rose from $84,020¹⁴ in May 2015 to $102,760³ in May 2025, 22%² in ten years, and the PTA median from $55,170¹⁴ to $68,380³, 24%². A straight line through those years adds about $2,005² a year to the PT median and reaches roughly $153,000² by 2050 in current dollars: our calculation, not a forecast. Single years should be read with care, as the official estimates are not designed for comparisons from one year to the next.³

After inflation, the picture turns. In 2025 dollars the PT median was $114,125² in 2015, peaked at $114,555² in 2016 and has fallen every year since 2021, to $102,760² in 2025, 10%² less than in 2015. PTAs lost 9%² over the same years.⁶⁶

Jobs grew faster than pay. PT employment rose from 209,690¹⁴ to 267,330³, 27%², and PTA employment by 38%² to 112,430³; 2020 was the only year in which both counts fell.¹⁹

The official ten-year outlook points the same way: 11.9%³⁹ more PT jobs by 2035 and 23.0%³⁹ more PTA jobs, against 3.5%³⁹ for all occupations, with about 13.4³⁹ thousand PT and 18.5³⁹ thousand PTA openings a year. The outlook counts self-employed therapists too, so its 2025 base of 283.7³⁹ thousand PTs is higher than the 267,330³ wage and salary jobs above.

Travel welders, photographers and nail techs

Outside therapy, travel pay is harder to pin down, because no official wage count separates the traveling members of these trades from the rest. What exists is the wage of each whole occupation and, for welders, one written travel rate.

The average travel welder salary

Welding is the one trade here with a travel allowance written into a union contract. Under the national pipeline agreement for June 1, 2026 to May 30, 2027, a journeyman welder receives a per diem of $165⁷ a day on top of wages, up from $155⁶⁷ in the 2023-24 rates, while other journeymen receive $105⁷. The journeyman hourly wage runs from $55.00⁷ in 20⁷ rate areas across the South, the Plains and the Mountain West to $60.89⁷ in California and New Jersey, and fringe benefits of $37.80⁷ to $39.95⁷ an hour are paid into funds, not wages. A 40-hour week at the lowest rate comes to $2,200², and seven days of per diem to $1,155².

No official figure covers travel welders alone. All welders, cutters, solderers and brazers earned a median of $53,750³ in May 2025, or $1,034² a week. Among industries with at least 1,000 welder jobs, the best paid were electric power, at a mean of $94,490¹¹, and rail transportation, at $80,990¹¹.

Base pay for welders on payrolls depends heavily on the industry: the ten best-paid industries with at least 1,000 welder jobs all pay a mean above $66,000¹¹ a year, against a median of $53,750³ for the occupation as a whole.

Average salary of a travel photographer

No official figure covers travel photographers either, and official wage counts miss most photographers entirely: 66.7%³⁹ of them are self-employed. The 51,760³ photographers on payrolls earned a median of $44,660³ in May 2025, up from $31,710¹⁴ in 2015. Among industries with at least 1,000 photographer jobs, motion picture and video paid the highest mean, $112,500¹¹. A photographer on the median wage earns $859² a week.

The average travel nail tech salary

The same limits apply to traveling nail techs: mobile nail work is not measured on its own. Manicurists and pedicurists on payrolls earned a median of $35,760³ in May 2025, $688² a week, and 23.1%³⁹ of them are self-employed. Traveler accommodation, the hotel and resort sector, paid them a mean of $49,300¹¹, against $38,390¹¹ in personal care services, where 150,470¹¹ of them work. Their median has grown faster than the other two trades in the chart, by 72%² since 2015.

What the numbers mean for a travel PT

For a therapist weighing a contract, three numbers do most of the work. The first is the weekly package against the local staff wage: nationally a travel listing posts 12%² more than the average PT earned in May 2025, but that margin runs from 42%² in Montana to below zero in New Jersey.^{32 5} The second is the share of the package paid as stipends, which is tax-free only with a tax home and only up to the federal rate, $1,246² a week at the standard rate through September 2026.⁴ The third is time between contracts: $2,268¹ a week over 13 weeks is $29,483², and a year of contracts with unpaid gaps pays less than the $117,931² upper bound.

The official data add a longer view. The average PT's base wage has grown in dollars but lost 10%² of its buying power since 2015, while posted travel pay rose 30%² in current dollars from June 2021 to September 2026.^{66 1} The two are different measures, so together they show direction, not the size of a gap. For PTAs the percentage margin over their own wage is larger, 18%², but a travel PTA listing still posts $711² a week less than a travel PT listing.

Conclusions

1. Posted packages run above the base wage. Posted travel packages, which include stipends, run 12% above the all-PT base wage and 34% above the base wage of agency-employed PTs (travel and local together); no source splits a package into wage and stipends, and stipends stay tax-free only with a tax home and up to the federal rate.^{11 1 4}
2. The margin depends on the state. Posted travel pay is 1.42 times the staff PT wage in Montana and 1.37 times in Idaho and Nebraska, but 0.96 times in New Jersey, and in California, where staff PTs are paid the most, it adds only 5.8%.^{32 35 36 5 37 6}
3. Posted travel pay rose while the staff wage lost ground to inflation. Travel PT listings rose 30% from June 2021 to September 2026 in current dollars; the real PT median fell 10% from 2015 to 2025.^{1 66}
4. PTAs gain more in percent, less in dollars. Travel PTA listings post 18% above the PTA wage, against 12% for PTs, yet $711 a week less than travel PT listings.^{9 3}
5. For welders, the travel rate is in a contract. The pipeline agreement's $165 daily per diem is a fixed daily allowance paid on top of wages, set in a union contract rather than a job listing.⁷