I constantly hear about how in demand pts are in my area, but just to test that, I check around my area for job listing for pts, and there's never anything besides >3 years experience or the same crap traveling pt company that no one ever responds to because they pay peanuts.
Myosin - 300K is indeed way too much debt for a PharmD. That's crazy.
Job markets, like real estate markets, are often very local. That's why I don't rely too much on the BLS numbers: they are ok at the macro level, but they don't tell me what the job market is like, right in my city. I think your best bet is to talk to the 3rd-year students. After graduation, a lot of people tend to stay within 250 miles of where they grew up or went to school. So polling the 3rd-year PT students who are about to graduate will give you a decent snapshot of what's going on in your area.
At my school (UNC), all the 3rd-years I have talked to seem to have solid prospects for job offers. But that's only valid for the Charlotte and Triangle areas of NC. And keep in mind the situation can change very quickly: when I got my MBA in 1999, you would get excellent job offers as long as you could fog a mirror: the economy was booming and the dot-com bubble was in full swing. The folks in the class that followed mine (class of 2000) saw their offers rescinded: they would interview in the Fall and sign job offers for starting the following May. April comes around and they would get a letter from the companies saying "Sorry, we can't take you on."
So, talk to the 3rd-years, talk to your professors, talk to the local PTs, and check out the job placement stats at your school. That's the best way to keep your finger on the pulse of the PT job market in your area.
I did some more back-of-the-envelope calculations re new PT schools. As noted in a previous post, there are about 10,250 new grads every year (205 schools currently, and an average of 50 students per graduating class). Let's assume there are 15 schools opening up every year - roughly one new school for every 3 states. So that's 750 additional new grads to add to the pot. If the new schools start their DPT programs in 2014, by 2017 we'll have about 11,000 new PTs entering the workforce each year, and roughly 1,000 more every year after that. By 2020, 14,000 new PTs would graduate.
By comparison, there are 124 pharmacy schools (as of 7/2012) and 12,000 PharmD degrees awarded in 2011. And just like in PT, new pharmacy schools are opening up. Although a pharmacist's job and a PT's job are quite different, I think the general trend is the same: saturation over the long run. Is the "long run" 5 years, 10 years, 20 years? I don't know.
And of course "Obamacare" may throw a big wrench into the works...
Bottom line: get into PT school as fast as you can, go to the least expensive school which accepts you, network a lot while in school, and find a way to stand out from the thousands of new grads each year.