Physical Therapy Job Market, repeat of history

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ynby86

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I think physical therapy might be headed down the same path that pharmacists went down in the 80s and 90s. The APTA and PT schools don't seem to care about avoiding a repeat of history. Here's two articles detailing the job market of pharmacy over the past years. I think you could replace pharmacist with physical therapist and it would read the same.

http://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/823365

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/life/overdose-pharmacy-students
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Why do you think this? You didn't provide any evidence that physical therapy is headed down the same path, even though they're very different fields.
 
The hands-on teaching requirement for PTs (limiting class sizes) should insulate us at least a little bit from what pharmacy has gone through. At my school there were 50 spots for PTs and 250 for pharmacy
 
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Both fields are allied health. In the 90s, pharmacy was the flavor of the month, now physical therapy is. In the 90s pharmacy moved to a doctor program and there was a proliferation of pharm schools. Same thing is happening with physical therapy right now (MPT to DPT) with a growth of 26 additional schools in the past ten years and growing. In fact, the large growth in physical therapy schools has become a concern for many seasoned PTs who are concerned where this might lead us if left unchecked. Again, just substitute pharmacist in these articles with physical therapist and it paints a similar picture. I think swolecat might have a point. Next year in 2015 there are expected to be about 9,000 PT graduates while pharmacists are churning out 13,000. But how long will that remain? It would be interesting to ask healthcare recruiters what their insights are on this which I will do.
 
Yeah, I understood that there are a growing number of students. However, physical therapy could see a growth in jobs. Only knowing the increase in number of students isn't enough information to guess what will happen in the future, so I was hoping you had further insight into this.
 
You will have to show that there will be more students than the job market can handle. The market for pharmacists is saturated, but that doesn't necessarily mean physical therapists will go the same route. PT's work in multiple settings, while pharmacists mainly work in drug stores or a pharmacy in the hospital. Pharmacy schools matriculate almost 90-100 students per year, while PT schools usually matriculate 40-50. The demand for physical therapists is growing every year, and if we physical therapists can unite and pass laws that allow unrestricted direct access, then our future actually looks pretty bright.
 
In some cities we are already seeing the situation where the schools are producing more graduates than there are jobs. Some cities are getting additional schools where there is no economic justification for one. Schools, and people like yourself, always cite the statistic that demand for physical therapy is increasing. Yes, there is expected to be a 30% increase in demand but that DOES NOT EQUAL a 30% demand increase for PTs. Again history will repeat itself. Insurance companies will do what they’ve done in the past which is tell PTs to do more with less. Physical therapy is a favorite for insurance companies in cutting back on reimbursement. For example, insurance companies will probably tell PTs they have to get by with 8 visits. In the future, PTs will be pressed to get more done. The actual job demand increase will be between 10-15%. Just because we have more settings does not translate into more job availability.
 
ynby86 - there was an extended discussion about the future of the profession in the thread below, starting at about post #53:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/starting-salary-for-dpt-new-grads.931151/
I am concerned with the number of PTs being pumped out by the schools. At the very least, this will make jobs in desirable areas harder to get. And long-term it will also depress salaries. But is "long-term" 2 years, or 5 years, or 10? I don't think anybody knows.
 
Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like the APTA or PT schools are willing to take into consideration business economics to avoid this pitfall. The consequences will vary depending what city/region you practice in and what field you want to do. I'm guessing that with the large influx of students and high interest in sports medicine that will be one field that will be difficult to get into.
 
Ok so should we start encouraging college kids to pick other careers? I need a job in a cool city!
 
I'm going to quote a modified version of a post I wrote in a similar thread a while back. I'm not saying anything here about whether or not any of the powers that be should be trying to limit the number of new PT's coming into the market, so take it for what it's worth:


When I started my "career search" I was very interested in PT. Since then I have researched literally dozens of careers over the course of hundreds of hours, and spent the most time on careers in healthcare (as I am a biology major). I recently realized I'd gotten to the point of "analysis to paralysis"...

I have seen every one of these dozens of times over: MD's saying they wish they would have gone to PA school. PA's being frustrated that they didn't just stick it out and go to med school. Pharmacists moaning about every freakin' thing known to man. Law school students saying they should have done computer science. Comp. sci. grads going to law school. Engineers going back to school to go into health care. Health care people telling people to go into engineering instead. Humanities PhD's working at Starbucks (wait that's not surprising actually :laugh:)...

The point is that the internet is not a representative sample of reality. Internet message boards represent only a very small slice of the members of a certain profession. A good source of information? Yes. What you should entirely base life changing decisions on? Not so much. The forums of the internet are highly biased towards the views of the pissed off and the frustrated, and biased against the voices of those who are just happily plodding along with their lives.

Yes, the internet is a fantastic source of information, and it will let you know that finding a job after a PhD or after pharmacy school is probably going to be tougher than after becoming a CPA. The internet is great for learning about what it takes to get into a certain profession and what members of that profession do on a daily basis. But there is no substitute for experience. Literally every career option I've have looked at, be it MD, PharmD, PhD, DPT, PA, nursing, law, computer science, engineering, you name it, has led me to find people all over the internet talking about a glut of new graduates and a lack of the job they were dreaming of, and telling prospective students to really think about picking something else.

Well no fake! The economy is bad. People are going to college like never before. Consumers don't have the money to spend on things that they did in times past. Salaries are stagnant in almost all professions. The job market is tough in almost all professions. Student loans burden new graduates in almost all professions. Graduate school programs with ever more time-consuming admissions requirements are fast becoming a prerequisite to almost all professions.

Should everybody in every profession throw their hands in the air and go on the internet telling everyone to pick a profession other than their own? I don't think so. Pick literally any career in existence and I guarantee you that with about an hour of Googling I could compile enough anecdotes, news articles, data points and testimonials to convince you to abandon it.

Do something that will make you happy. Work hard and work smart. You'll be fine. Use the data that is available to you to help you make a practical and informed decision, but don't become so bogged down in reading between the lines and attempting to prognosticate based on that data that you are fearful of pursuing something you are passionate about.

I'm choosing PT because it was what I was interested in from the beginning, because it is a career in which I can work hard and support a family and because it is a career that will make a difference in the lives of others, not because some people posting comments on Yahoo Voices tell me I should or shouldn't.

Rant over 😀
 
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Here’s what I’ve hear and seen. Good job markets are: Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Jacksonville, FL, and Kentucky as a whole. Some pretty bad markets are Mississippi, Hawaii, and some areas in New England. What I’ve heard about California is the further south you go the worse the job market is. The Bay Area and Central California are good while areas like San Diego are not so hot.

Physical therapy will still be good field to go into as a whole but it's not going to be as amazing and lucrative as the PT schools have made it out to be.

Regarding what knj27 wrote, that's why I don't take my statistics from discussion boards, I get them from reliable agencies, bureaus, and job searching companies.. Numbers don't lie. I'm just upset that the schools and others are saying how great it will be for future PTs when its not going to be as rosy as they make it out to be. They're screwing over PTs by not curbing the unnecessary growth of schools in some regions.
 
ynby86 said:
Here’s what I’ve hear and seen. Good job markets are: Phoenix, Dallas, Houston, San Francisco, Jacksonville, FL, and Kentucky as a whole. Some pretty bad markets are Mississippi, Hawaii, and some areas in New England. What I’ve heard about California is the further south you go the worse the job market is. The Bay Area and Central California are good while areas like San Diego are not so hot.

Physical therapy will still be good field to go into as a whole but it's not going to be as amazing and lucrative as the PT schools have made it out to be.

Regarding what knj27 wrote, that's why I don't take my statistics from discussion boards, I get them from reliable agencies, bureaus, and job searching companies.. Numbers don't lie. I'm just upset that the schools and others are saying how great it will be for future PTs when its not going to be as rosy as they make it out to be. They're screwing over PTs by not curbing the unnecessary growth of schools in some regions.
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Throw down some numbers and your projection, along with your variables (with ref) and your simulated modeling formula. 10 years would be nice. Numbers don't lie? Let's pretend to throw in some life experience and realize that it's all in the interpretation and representation. Let's see if we can all get this doom and gloom into perspective, with some actual substance.
 
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Azimuthal said:
Throw down some numbers and your projection, along with your variables (with ref) and your simulated modeling formula. 10 years would be nice. Numbers don't lie? Let's pretend to throw in some life experience and realize that it's all in the interpretation and representation. Let's see if we can all get this doom and gloom into perspective, with some actual substance.
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Phoenix has had on average 35 new full-time jobs every week for the past couple of months. Philadelphia and Dallas ~ 25. San Jose and surrounding cities minus SF is around 15. Can't remember the numbers from the others but I do know which category they belong in. The information comes from business magazines (Business Insider, CNN Money, US News, local economic development reports from non-profits, and local municipality economic reports) and job recruiting companies (which are always on the lookout for new jobs). You determine which cities are good by seeing how many graduates are produced within that city, seeing what percent of those students stay in the region, how many outsiders move there, and matching it with average number of jobs produced monthly or weekly.

Happy Azimuthal? Sorry if you interpret it as doom and gloom but the intent is to show that some metro areas will have too many PTs. It is a good field and most probably can't go wrong in it but it won't not as amazing as schools make it out to be. This message is intended to serve as a clarion call that we do not repeat the same mistake pharmacy did by proliferating the number of schools and not controlling the number of graduates.
 
Here's a link to a bls site with some current numbers:


I'd guess that higher annual earnings correspond with greater demand (and greater professional prospects). If so, here is where a go-getter should go:
Laredo, TX
Las Vegas-Paradise, NV
Brownsville-Harlingen, TX
Lake Havasu City - Kingman, AZ
Vallejo-Fairfield, CA
Roanoke, VA
San Francisco-San Mateo-Redwood City, CA Metropolitan Division
Punta Gorda, FL
El Paso, TX
Wichita Falls, TX​

Las Vegas, the Bay Area and rural Texas. Who knew?

PT seems like a unique field for a couple reasons: we are hands on and (ideally) we spend much more time with patients than other professions. I don't care who my pharmacist is. I switch optometrists willy-nilly. Even my PCP is more or less interchangeable. But I choose my dentist with care. That person will put his or her fingers in my mouth every 6 months until I die. It's personal.

PT might be more toward the personal side of things, making it harder to commoditize. At least I hope so.

Another consideration is that our economic future is so contingent on legislation. This makes things incredibly difficult to predict, and if anything it underscores the importance of being an APTA member.
 
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OP, since you missed the point...and tip toed around the request... Where are the 'raw' numbers so that 'we' may run them through together. By asking you for the formula, we can then interpret the outcome ourselves. I would wager that we will all come to different conclusions. I can read magazines also, and find that they are poor sources with journalists who put on their '5-minute' researcher's cap. And I'd advise keeping your magazine/periodicals list to yourself next time if you want to maintain any credibility. Business Insider, CNN, etc.? Really... Post the economic reports and a synopsis of their relations to PT. THEN get their raw data and their method (formula) and deduct the 'hows' and the 'whys'. You may notice a lot of biases and how including or neglecting a variable can indeed make the numbers 'lie'.

I don't like all these backwood schools opening as much as the next guy. It decreases the barrier of entry. However, I'm not as naive as to speculate baselessly. The local economy will vary region to region and the full impact of the AHA is still undetermined.
 
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I am also undoubtedly bias as I'm from the SF Bay Area 🙂
 
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Azimuthal said:
OP, since you missed the point...and tip toed around the request... Where are the 'raw' numbers so that 'we' may run them through together. By asking you for the formula, we can then interpret the outcome ourselves. I would wager that we will all come to different conclusions. I can read magazines also, and find that they are poor sources with journalists who put on their '5-minute' researcher's cap. And I'd advise keeping your magazine/periodicals list to yourself next time if you want to maintain any credibility. Business Insider, CNN, etc.? Really... Post the economic reports and a synopsis of their relations to PT. THEN get their raw data and their method (formula) and deduct the 'hows' and the 'whys'. You may notice a lot of biases and how including or neglecting a variable can indeed make the numbers 'lie'.

I don't like all these backwood schools opening as much as the next guy. It decreases the barrier of entry. However, I'm not as naive as to speculate baselessly. The local economy will vary region to region and the full impact of the AHA is still undetermined.
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At least we can agree the impact varies from region to region. Aggregately it has the potential to oversaturate. It doesn't spell doom and gloom for all. If you want to go into a job market economic analysis for cities that goes away from what I wanted to discuss. The point at hand with this is we can't produce more graduates than what is necessary which I think you and I can agree on.
 
knj27, I looked at what you wrote again and I like a number of points you make. I agree with you that's it all too easy for everyone to say the grass is greener on the other side. At times when I looked at the numbers in some cities I started to see it that way. But PT is still a good field, people need us, and if you work smart you will succeed. Road blocks are bound to happen in any profession and I think for us one that we have to look out for is are these backwood schools, as Azimuthal wrote. I'm worried colleges and universities see PT as a potential cash cow and are willing to ignore the pitfalls of producing too many like pharmacy did.
 
ynby86 said:
knj27, I looked at what you wrote again and I like a number of points you make. I agree with you that's it all too easy for everyone to say the grass is greener on the other side. At times when I looked at the numbers in some cities I started to see it that way. But PT is still a good field, people need us, and if you work smart you will succeed. Road blocks are bound to happen in any profession and I think for us one that we have to look out for is are these backwood schools, as Azimuthal wrote. I'm worried colleges and universities see PT as a potential cash cow and are willing to ignore the pitfalls of producing too many like pharmacy did.
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You largely missed the point of my post initially, but looks like you pretty much got it 🙂 And yay for someone saying PHX is a good job market :clap: I don't have any numbers, but I must say that almost every PT clinic I have looked up in the PHX metro area has staff bio's like "so and so graduated from AT Still in 2012" and "so and so graduated from Midwestern in 2013". It seems to be pretty consistent. Lotta old folks here, and the percentage of the population that they make up is increasing by the day. So maybe that helps?

It is a valid point to say that the rate at which schools open should be carefully controlled. As I believe someone mentioned, organizations like the AMA seem to do this largely by having extremely robust requirements for opening a school. Physical therapy school is an entirely different thing than med school though.

To say that numbers don't lie, however, is false. Numbers with "references" to back them up are always the best way to get someone to believe a dubious claim or a specious argument. Anyone who has taken a basic statistics class or participated in any way in scientific research can tell you that what numbers appear to mean on the surface is almost never what they really mean. People with Master's degrees and PhD's in numerous schools and specialties of economics, logic and statistics are required to have any hope at accurately prognosticating the future of a field in the detailed way that you are attempting to. If you read something in CNN Money or US News you have to take it for what it's worth. It's no different that the "scientific" polls that are conducted during the presidential campaigns. If they were so "scientific", they would pick how many votes each person is going to get with a lot more precision than they do. And they don't not because they are necessarily following unsound principles, but because in these sorts of endeavors you can't expect things to be an exact science. These sorts of predictions are incredibly complicated and labor intensive to make with any degree of certainty.
 
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I use the periodicals to gauge certain major metro areas. But for cities I'm interested in working in I get the numbers from job recruiting agencies that watch how many openings occur monthly/weekly. I was surprised when I first saw Phoenix was doing so well, it seems like a PT can't go wrong working there.
 
Why are you so into this anyway? Are you just going through a phase right now trying to figure out where to live? You could make an absolute career out of worrying about and analyzing the future of PT, but I don't think it would be good for your health...
 
Why do you care? What business is it of yours?

This thread has moved from its initial purpose of a hypothesis that physical therapy could repeat pharmacy's mistake with future proliferation of schools producing excess graduates. I don't care about discussing the econometrics of a job market for some random town. I'm not here to read why some people joined the field. Internet discussion boards have the reputation for going off on tangents. This is going nowhere and for that I sign off.
 
Actually, I believe that many of the points that were brought up does indeed relate to the thread topic. The only difference I see is that they are not aligned with your own hypothesis. Debate topics aren't linear in fashion and do not run through narrow tunnels. The point is to share ideas. You don't seem to appreciate that.
 
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ynby86 said:
Why do you care? What business is it of yours?

This thread has moved from its initial purpose of a hypothesis that physical therapy could repeat pharmacy's mistake with future proliferation of schools producing excess graduates. I don't care about discussing the econometrics of a job market for some random town. I'm not here to read why some people joined the field. Internet discussion boards have the reputation for going off on tangents. This is going nowhere and for that I sign off.
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I care because I'm interested in what you have to say. It's my business because you are replying to my posts and engaging me in a conversation. It seems like all you are looking for is for people to validate your opinions, rather than for people to engage you in discussion.
 
knj27 said:
To say that numbers don't lie, however, is false. Numbers with "references" to back them up are always the best way to get someone to believe a dubious claim or a specious argument. Anyone who has taken a basic statistics class or participated in any way in scientific research can tell you that what numbers appear to mean on the surface is almost never what they really mean. .
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It reminds me of these arm-chair researchers who browse PubMed and look for abstracts that support their own conclusion. This won't work. PubMed is designed to lead you to relevant research, not to jump to perfunctory conclusions. They read the abstract and the conclusion and don't read the results or discussion. But that's where the meat of the article is. If you can't interpret results on your own and simply rely on a few sentences in the conclusion to make your point, then you don't know how to synthesize research. You have to have the raw data and interpret it yourself to make a conclusion.
 
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ynby86 said:
Why do you care? What business is it of yours?

This thread has moved from its initial purpose of a hypothesis that physical therapy could repeat pharmacy's mistake with future proliferation of schools producing excess graduates..
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And quality. Jim Gordon raised this point in this year's McMillan Lecture: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25013001 (you have to be a member to download, so here is a press release of his talk: http://www.apta.org/NEXT/News/2014/6/12/).

I think many in academics echo too many weak programs and CAPTE is unwilling to address this. Fewer, larger programs is a good goal, and finally having CAPTE enforce the accreditation requirements would help a lot!
 
ynby86 said:
Both fields are allied health. In the 90s, pharmacy was the flavor of the month, now physical therapy is. In the 90s pharmacy moved to a doctor program and there was a proliferation of pharm schools. Same thing is happening with physical therapy right now (MPT to DPT) with a growth of 26 additional schools in the past ten years and growing. In fact, the large growth in physical therapy schools has become a concern for many seasoned PTs who are concerned where this might lead us if left unchecked. Again, just substitute pharmacist in these articles with physical therapist and it paints a similar picture. I think swolecat might have a point. Next year in 2015 there are expected to be about 9,000 PT graduates while pharmacists are churning out 13,000. But how long will that remain? It would be interesting to ask healthcare recruiters what their insights are on this which I will do.
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I remember about 15 years ago PT was the flavor of the month; the newspapers were touting the high job placement. Then, the unemployment started, and PT immediately left the public eye. Fast forward, it seems PT has had good employment numbers again. What happened in the interim between c.a. 1999 to 2009 to account for the better employment news?
 
If you're willing to treat any patient, anywhere, in any setting, you will probably have no trouble finding a decent job as a PT. Don't commit yourself to one setting in one city. You will severely limit your options.
 
I know its been a while, but felt like reinvigorating this post as I came up on it out of the blue. Recently I moved from Florida to California and had little problem finding work in California. Pay is up there too. I've been a therapist for 3 years and decided I was bored with Florida. In the 4 weeks I got my license here, I had 4 job opportunities, decided to go with a sub-acute that pays $45/hr. I never had a single offer under $41/hr. I also picked up per-diem work for saturday/sunday at a SNF less than a block away from me. The fulltime job plus perdiem gets me past $100,000 per year.
 
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