How the pay index is computed, and what it means for your offer

Every pay index figure on this site is the median of the weekly gross pay advertised on open travel contracts in its publisher's own job list, taken from a stored copy of that list and rounded to a whole dollar. It is not an offer, a survey or take-home pay, and it changes only when that stored copy is refreshed, which is why each figure carries the date the copy was taken.

By ProTherapy Staffing, published October 26, 2026.

Where do the pay figures on this site come from?

ProTherapy Staffing, which publishes this site, posts its open travel contracts in a public job list, the same list its job board reads. The pay index reads only the columns that list makes public: discipline, state, city, setting, the advertised weekly pay and the start date. No salary survey, no outside data and no other agency's postings are mixed in.

The list carries no facility names and no bill rates, so neither can reach a figure. What a figure describes is what contracts were posted at for the traveler: the weekly gross, meaning taxable wages plus any housing and meals stipends, before tax. It is never an after-tax estimate.

Which postings are left out before a median is taken?

A posting listed under several settings counts toward each setting it names. That keeps a contract in every setting table where it belongs, and it is why the setting counts on these pages should never be added together to get a total.

How is each median worked out and rounded?

For any slice, such as a discipline in a state or a discipline in a setting, the advertised weekly pay of every remaining contract is put in order and the middle value is taken. When the count is even there is no single middle contract, so the pair in the middle is averaged. The result is rounded to the nearest whole dollar. Nothing is smoothed, weighted, projected or adjusted for experience, because the list holds nothing to adjust with.

A median needs enough contracts behind it to mean anything. Below a minimum count, which the pages that apply it state beside their tables, no median is printed. The calculator then shows the posting count instead, and a state page shows the advertised range and the number of openings; where a state has no openings in a discipline, it shows the national median for that discipline, labelled as national. A thin slice gets fewer words, never an invented figure.

If you want an offer read against these figures line by line, ask a ProTherapy recruiter: Find my next contract.

What does the pay data date beside a figure mean?

The index is not read live from the job list. A copy of the list is stored, and the pay by discipline page and the calculator are both built from that copy, so they cannot drift apart. The date printed after "pay data as of" is the date that copy was taken and saved.

That date comes from the stored copy itself, never from a timestamp on a computer file, which can change when nothing in the data has. If the date cannot be established, the pages are not rebuilt rather than stamped with a guess. The Travel Therapy Pay Index page on the publisher's main site is built from a snapshot of the same stored copy, kept for its month, and it names that snapshot's date, so its date can differ from the one printed here.

When do the pay index figures change?

Only when the stored copy is refreshed. That is a deliberate step in a release, not a timer: the job list is read again, the release stops if too large a share of postings arrive without a pay figure, the new copy is saved, and every page built from it is rebuilt. A separate daily job that records when postings first appear never touches the stored copy.

Before a release goes out, a checker recomputes each figure a page declares from the stored copy and stops the release if any of them disagrees. How that check works is set out on the publisher's how we verify page. Between refreshes the figures stay put while contracts open and fill, so the date tells you how current the picture is.

How should you use the index when you read an offer?

Compare like with like. The index is weekly gross before tax, so set it beside an offer's weekly total at the contracted hours, not beside an hourly rate or a take-home estimate.

Then look at the split. The stipend part of a package stays untaxed only while you keep a tax home, as the IRS guidance on travel expenses explains, and stipends are commonly set against the per diem rates that GSA publishes for each locality. Offers with the same gross can leave different amounts in your account.

Finally, remember whose contracts these are. The index describes the publisher's own open contracts on the date shown, not every agency or every facility. An offer well above or below it is a reason to ask what is different about that contract, not proof that it is fair or unfair.

Frequently asked questions

Is the pay index the same as what I will be paid?

No. It is the middle of the weekly gross advertised on open contracts on the date shown. Your offer depends on the facility, the setting, the state and how the package is split between taxable wages and stipends.

Why does a slice show a count or a range instead of a median?

Because too few contracts sit behind it to support a median. The page shows the posting count or the advertised range instead, or the national median for the discipline, labelled as national.

How current are the pay index figures?

As current as the pay data date printed beside them. The figures come from a stored copy of the job list and change only when that copy is refreshed, so check the date before you plan around a number.

Sources