I made these charts for you, from BLS data. This data will be more accurate than word of mouth I suspect. You can estimate that new clinicians will make between 10-25th percentile. My friends from OT school started at the 20-25th percentile range with their first OT position.
http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2...ittle-the-middle-class-makes-in-30-u-s-cities
I wish you all the best of luck with salary, we all need it. I have been crunching salary statistics for quite some time, I'm not greedy, I'm in a lot of debt. I hope you get more for your OTD, but sadly I have heard from clinicians that OTDs straight out of school do not make anymore money than a MS. In this article I posted below it states that experience, not education level, is what determines OT salary. I hope candidates with OTDs see a bump in salary, but I'd implore any applicant thinking that the degree will translate into more money to think about it from the perspective of the hiring manager. The OTs job is to provide services, and have high productivity (read: billing). Is the added value of the OT in a SNF more that a hiring manager would prefer to pay more to have one? Maybe. It is likely that many hiring managers will see applicants with entry level degrees and question the need to pay more.
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https://www.webpt.com/blog/post/four-things-you-need-know-about-ot-salary
According to
this salary survey published by ADVANCE for Occupational Therapy Practitioners, “Perhaps the single most dependable determining factor of salaries was years of experience in the OT field.” In
that survey specifically, the average salary for OTs with five or fewer years of experience was about $64,000, whereas those with 21-25 years of experience earned approximately $78,000—a difference of about $14,000.
This PayScale report shows an even larger gap: according to the data cited there, therapists with more than 20 years of experience earned an average income of $84,000.
Education, on the other hand, did not appear to play a significant role in salary determination. In fact, the ADVANCE survey revealed that OTs with bachelor’s degrees actually reported a higher average salary (about $73,000) than those with entry-level master’s degrees (about $67,000). It’s important to note, however, that this discrepancy likely resulted—at least in part—from differences in experience; the vast majority of bachelor’s degree-holders had more than ten years’ experience, while most of the therapists with master’s degrees had been practicing fewer than ten years.
Setting:
The type of facility in which you practice also affects your earning potential. According to
BLS data, OTs working in home health environments make an average of $91,860—about $10,000 more than the national average of $81,690. The average salary for therapists working in nursing care facilities (i.e., skilled nursing facilities) also comes in well above the national average at $88,670. On the opposite end of the spectrum, OTs practicing in elementary and secondary schools average $71,470—about $10,000 below the national average.
