Is there a physical therapist shortage?

There were 260,298 licensed physical therapists in the United States in July 2026. That number has gone up every month this year. Roughly a thousand new physical therapists join the registry every month, and the profession has never once shrunk in the window we measured.

What the registry shows

Every clinician in the United States who bills for care has an NPI. Physical therapists are no exception, so the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System is the closest thing to a census of the profession. It updates monthly and it is public.

We pulled four consecutive monthly files and counted every individual provider whose primary taxonomy is physical therapist.

The workforce grew by 3,450 in a single quarter. If a shortage means fewer people, there is no shortage.

Three in a thousand file a move

Look at the last column again. In July, 829 physical therapists filed a new practice address. Against a workforce of 260,298, that is 0.3%.

That 0.3% is the visible market. The true number of job changers is higher, because the registry only records a move when a therapist files a new practice address, and contract or staffing work billed under a clinic's group NPI rarely triggers one. But multiply the visible number several times over and it is still a sliver of 260,298.

A job advertisement is a filter that only catches people who are looking right now, and every clinic in your metro is fishing in that same sliver. That is why the same role sits open for four months while the profession quietly adds another four thousand people.

Where they are

Supply is not evenly spread, and neither is the competition for it.

California has the deepest pool in the country. It also gained 102 newly licensed physical therapists in July alone, plus 17 who moved in from another state, against 15 who left. The pool is deep and growing.

A California clinic that cannot fill a PT role is short of attention, not candidates. The pool holds 22,272 people, and nearly all of them are employed somewhere else with no reason to read job listings.

Supply doubles in early summer

Go back to the New column in the first table. April added 726 physical therapists and May added 623. June added 1,445 and July 1,285, roughly twice the spring rate. That is the graduation cycle: DPT classes finish in spring, licensure follows, and the registry fills up in early summer.

For a clinic this is the one seasonal edge in the data. A posting that sat unanswered in March was competing for roughly 700 arrivals nationwide. The same posting in June meets double the incoming supply, and new licensees are the one group reliably looking for work. If a role can wait a few weeks, early summer is when the odds shift toward you.

It is also the ceiling on what waiting can do. Even in the strongest month, counting both new licensees and movers, fewer than one physical therapist in a hundred is visibly in motion. The rest have to be reached where they already work.

What this means for hiring

If you are hiring a physical therapist and the posting is not working, the diagnosis is almost never that the market is empty. Check the number for your own state above. The pool is there.

What is missing is a way to reach the enormous majority who are not looking. That means going to them directly, one at a time, with something specific about their situation rather than a link to a listing. It is slower per person, and it is the only method that touches the part of the market where the people actually are.