What a respiratory therapist earns, by metro

A respiratory therapist in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara has a median wage of $149,680. In Ponce the median is $25,780. That is a 5.81-fold difference for the same job title, which is unusually wide even by the standards of a country this large — and it means a national average for this role is close to meaningless.

Pay is tightly banded

From $63,660 at the 10th percentile to $118,050 at the 90th is only 1.85×, which is narrow. Pay for respiratory therapists is set more by structure than by individual outcome — scales, steps, licensure. That makes income predictable and makes the ceiling real: the way to earn materially more is usually to change role or location, not to out-perform within this one.

Why the range is 5.81× wide

8 of the ten best-paying metros for respiratory therapists are in CA. When one state dominates the top of the table like this, cost of living is doing part of the work but rarely all of it — state licensing rules, public-sector pay scales and the presence of a few large employers usually explain the rest. If you are comparing an offer in CA against one elsewhere, adjust for housing before concluding anything.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 29-1126. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 392 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 136 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.