traveling physical therapy Archives

If you are looking for the highest-paying states for travel therapy jobs in 2026, you might be tempted to just search for the highest gross weekly pay on a travel therapy job board. But this would be a mistake.

In the world of travel healthcare high gross pay can be incredibly deceptive. Between state income taxes, the complexities of “tax home” rules, and rising housing costs, the state with the biggest paycheck on paper often isn’t the state where you actually keep the most money.

As we move through 2026, you’ll come out ahead financially by being strategic about geo-arbitrage: the art of working in high-demand “hotspots” while keeping your expenses and tax burden low.

The “Tax Home” Paradox: Why 0% Doesn’t Always Mean 0%

Before diving into the rankings, we have to address the most important rule in travel therapy finance: The Resident vs. Non-Resident Tax Credit.

As we’ve discussed in our comprehensive guide to state tax rates, travel therapists generally pay the higher of two tax rates: their home state (tax home) or the state where they are working.

The 0% Tax Dream: If your tax home is in Florida (0% tax) and you work in Washington (0% tax), you pay $0 in state income tax.
The Reality Check: If your tax home is in Virginia (approx. 5.75% tax) and you work in Washington (0% tax), you still owe Virginia that 5.75%. In this case, you shouldn’t just look for 0% states; you need high gross pay to overcome your home state’s tax.

The 2026 Travel Therapy Job “Hotspots”

We asked top recruiters from major travel therapy agencies where they are seeing the highest travel therapy job rates currently. Here are some of the top states with highest travel therapy pay for Q1 of 2026:

California
Vermont
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Maine
Alaska
Illinois
Montana
The Dakotas
Missouri

The “Real Wealth” Rankings: Best States for Net Pay

Washington State

Why it wins: Consistently high West Coast rates + No State Income Tax.
The Strategy: Avoid Seattle’s rent. Target smaller cities or more rural areas for better cost of living to keep more money in your pocket.
The Math: If your tax home is in a low or no tax state, you’ll come out significantly ahead.

New Hampshire

The Pay: New England rates are currently leading the nation and we’re seeing high travel therapist rates in NH.
The Tax: 0% state income tax on earned wages. Unlike neighboring VT or MA, NH lets you keep the entirety of your taxable hourly rate if you also live in a no income tax state, and still benefits you if you live in a lower tax state.
Cost of Living Strategy: You can find moderate to lower cost of living areas in NH compared with other northeast states.

The Midwest (IL, MO, OK)

Why it wins: These states are currently “overpaying” travelers to attract much needed therapists.
Cost of Living: You can find moderate to higher pay packages here with lower cost for rent.

Surprise Runner-Up: California

Don’t let the “high tax” reputation scare you. This may actually come as a surprise to many. Because travel taxable hourly rates are low ($20–$27/hr), most of your CA income falls into the 1% to 4% tax brackets (this is your “effective” tax rate). Recent jobs in California offer some of the highest gross numbers in the country. Your “effective” tax here is often lower than in the Midwest! The caveat is that cost of living can be high in many parts of California, so be sure to research the specific area and compare that with the weekly pay before signing a contract.

Highest Paying Settings

Setting matters as much as location. If you want the highest pay, look for home health or rural hospitals. Here’s the current overall rank for highest paying settings:

Home Health
Hospital inpatient/acute
Outpatient
Skilled Nursing
Schools

Summary: How to Pick Your 2026 Travel Therapy Contracts

To build the most wealth this year as a travel therapist, follow these guidelines:

Look for high weekly pay packages
Consider the state taxes (but don’t put too much stock in this if your tax home state is high tax)
Research the cost of living and rent prices to know how much ahead you’ll come out compared to the pay rate
Consider working in home health to earn the highest pay
Avoid overly saturated locations like Florida or Hawaii where pay is moderate to low and cost of living is high

For more info about the travel therapy job market, check out our January 2026 Job Market Update

Looking for the best paying travel therapy jobs? Check out our Hot Travel Therapy Job List here, or get our recommendations for travel therapy recruiters here to assist you with your job search!

Check out the additional resources below, and feel free to reach out to us if you have any questions or need advice on starting your journey as a travel therapist!

Additional Resources:

Written by Whitney Casazza, PT, DPT – Whitney has been a traveling physical therapist since 2015. She has become an expert in the field of travel healthcare through her experience, research, and networking over a decade. She and her husband and fellow Travel PT, Jared, are the Travel Therapy Mentors.

To say that things have changed a lot since we began our travel therapy journey in 2015 would be an understatement. Starting out as new grad travelers back then, there was limited information available on the internet to help us figure everything out. There weren’t the “social media influencers” of today. We had to learn a lot of things “the hard way,” such as choosing travel therapy companies and recruiters to trust, figuring out how to handle our job searches, applying for all of our state licenses, and managing all of our credentialing documents.

Fortunately for new travelers starting in the 2020’s, things have come a long way. Not only are there many experienced travel therapists such as ourselves out there to teach you what we’ve learned along the way, there are new and innovative technologies available to travelers to help make our lives easier!

One of the new technologies that we love is Kamana, which offers a secure digital wallet for travelers to keep up with all of their important credentialing documents, as well as allows travelers to safely send their entire profile to any recruiter at any company. Kamana’s goal is for us travelers to have one universal profile that will be accepted by all travel companies, instead of having to fill out separate ones when we work with different agencies! Best of all, their services are totally free for travelers. As financially savvy travel therapists ourselves, we love tools that don’t cost us anything and make life easier!

Understanding the Credentialing Process

If you’re new to the travel therapy world, you may not yet be aware of all the different credentialing documents you have to keep track of as a travel healthcare provider. If you’ve been in travel therapy for a while, you may already have developed the frustration of trying to keep track of everything.

As a traveler, here are some of the things you’ll need to maintain:

Resume
References
State licenses
CPR certification
Specialty certifications
Copy of driver’s license
Copy of Passport
Annual physical exam
PPD tests
Vaccine records
Drug screens

All of these need to be kept up to date, and you need to have them easily accessible in case you need to send them to your recruiter when searching for a new contract, or often to a different recruiter if you decide to search for jobs at another company on your next contract. The recruiters need these documents in order to keep your profile up to date and submit you to jobs. Often, hospitals and other facilities won’t accept your application if these documents aren’t up to date.

When we first got started as travelers, one of our recruiters recommended keeping a physical binder/folder with all of our documents that we could carry around with us from assignment to assignment. We actually still have this old school, 2015, over-stuffed and mangled file folder, and truly have carried it everywhere. But in reality, where you need those documents is not in physical form, it’s in digital form. So at some point or another, we’ve taken photos or scanned these documents, saved them to our computers, uploaded them to email, and sent them to everyone and their coworker.

Looking back now, this seems so archaic. Not only is it an absolute mess to keep track of everything in these various physical and digital folders, but it’s also not secure at all. We should not be emailing or texting these important, sensitive documents back and forth, knowing that these forms of communication are not very secure.

Luckily, we now know that there is a better way.

Streamlining the Credentialing Process with Kamana

Here is how you can utilize Kamana to make this process easier and more secure:

Create your free Kamana profile here
Fill out your profile with your demographics & information
Upload your credentialing documents to the secure digital wallet
Keep all your files here for easy access (you’ll know where to find them instead of hunting them down next time!)
Watch your email for updates on expiring credentials so you won’t forget to renew something important!
Choose to send your full profile to your favorite recruiter(s) with one click, so they can receive it via a secure link, not regular email
Choose to send your limited profile with only some of the information to recruiter(s) who are new to you and you’re not sure if you want them to have access to everything yet (also sent via a secure link)
Let your recruiters know you’d rather send information this way if at all possible to keep it secure, and let them know they don’t have to register or pay to use Kamana in order to receive the file

Moving the Travel Therapy Industry Forward

As experienced travel therapists, we are so excited to see companies innovating and pushing our industry forward. We are so glad that the founders of Kamana, one of whom was a travel nurse himself, are finding ways to use technology in order to make all the processes easier for travel healthcare providers. That way, we can focus on doing what we do best: providing great care to our patients and exploring the country along the way, without having to get bogged down by all the logistics! We can’t wait to see what else is to come in the future with healthcare staffing technology!

Fellow travelers: have you started using Kamana yet to manage your credentials? Let us know in the comments! If you have any additional questions about Kamana, feel free to message us, or visit their website at kamanahealth.com to learn more!

This post was sponsored by Kamana Health. All information is original and reflects authentic viewpoints from Travel Therapy Mentor.

Tag: traveling physical therapy

The Highest Paying Travel Therapy States in 2026: Balancing Gross Pay, Taxes, and Cost of Living