Allied health is where South Florida facilities lose the most time for the least attention. Nursing vacancies get daily conversation, a dashboard, and an escalation path. A Director of Rehab seat or a ventilator-unit respiratory therapist goes unfilled for four months and shows up as a note in a meeting, right up until therapy minutes slip, a unit stops taking the referrals that need it, or a survey finding lands on coverage.

These roles get budgeted like nursing and recruited like nursing, and they behave like neither. The pools are smaller, the pay is structured differently, and the reasons a candidate says yes are not the same. Here is what the market actually looks like in Miami-Dade and Broward in 2026.

The 2026 ranges

These reflect what we see in offers and declines across the corridor this year. Treat them as a starting position for a conversation with your CFO, not as a quote.

Physical therapist (PT): $80,000 to $100,000. Skilled nursing and home health sit at the top of the band, hospital in the middle, outpatient clinics at the bottom. A PT with two years of experience and no interest in a productivity-driven outpatient schedule has real leverage in this market and knows it.

Physical therapist assistant (PTA): $60,000 to $72,000, or roughly $29 to $35 an hour. Steadier supply than PT, and the role where a facility with a reasonable caseload and predictable hours competes well without paying at the top.

Occupational therapist (OT): $78,000 to $95,000, with COTAs at $55,000 to $68,000. Similar setting spread to PT. Hand therapy and specialty certifications price above the band.

Speech-language pathologist (SLP): $80,000 to $98,000. A smaller pool than PT or OT, and one that splits between school-district employment and healthcare. That split matters: a school schedule is a benefit your building cannot match, so a clinical SLP search is partly an argument about what your setting offers instead.

Respiratory therapist (RT): $70,000 to $88,000, or roughly $34 to $42 an hour, with night and weekend differentials that in practice have to be larger than they were two years ago. Ventilator-unit and long-term acute care experience prices at the top. This is the tightest allied health pool in South Florida.

Director of Rehab / therapy program manager: $95,000 to $125,000, depending on building size, whether the role carries budget and productivity accountability, and whether therapy is in-house or contracted. In-house programs pay more because the seat carries more.

One caveat that swallows a lot of comparisons: home health and contract therapy are often quoted per visit or per unit, not as a salary. A per-visit rate that sounds generous converts to a number well inside these bands once you apply a realistic caseload, and candidates do that math before their first interview even if the job posting does not.

Why these roles stall

The pool is smaller than the nursing pool by an order of magnitude. A mid-size skilled nursing facility might compete with thirty employers for RNs. For a ventilator-capable RT or an SLP with dysphagia depth, the number of qualified people within a reasonable drive is measured in dozens, and nearly all of them are working. Applicant flow does not reach them, because they are not applying anywhere. That is the same dynamic we described in why your healthcare job post gets no qualified applicants, only more extreme.

Productivity expectations decide the hire more often than pay does. Therapists talk about productivity standards the way nurses talk about ratios. A posting that leads with salary and never mentions caseload, documentation time, or whether evaluations count toward the standard is asking the candidate to assume the worst. Many do.

Contract therapy blurs who is actually hiring. If your therapy is contracted, your rehab staffing depends on a vendor's ability to recruit, which you do not control and rarely see. Facilities moving therapy in-house discover they are entering a labor market they have never recruited in directly, with a pay structure they have not benchmarked.

The schedule is the offer. For home health and territory-based therapy roles, drive time between visits is the job. Two offers at the same rate and a tighter territory wins every time, and a candidate can tell which is which from the first conversation.

What actually fills them

Recruit directly, and accept that the first conversation is not about a job. The therapists you want took their current role for a reason and are not unhappy enough to be looking. A call that opens with what is different about your caseload, your team, or your setting gets further than a posting ever will. That is ordinary permanent placement work in a small pool: outreach, not applicant flow.

Put the numbers that matter in the description. Caseload, productivity standard, documentation system, whether evaluations are counted, who covers weekends and how often. Therapists screen on these before salary. A posting that omits them filters out exactly the experienced candidates who know to ask.

Price nights and weekend RT coverage as its own decision. A differential set in 2023 is not holding anyone in 2026. If your ventilator unit runs on overtime and per-diem coverage, the cost of the vacancy is already larger than the correction, a calculation we walked through in cutting agency staffing spend.

Treat therapy leadership as a real search. A Director of Rehab sets productivity culture, defends therapy minutes in survey, and is a primary reason therapists stay or leave. The qualified pool in Miami-Dade and Broward is small and employed, and the search usually has to run quietly while the seat is still occupied, which is the case for a confidential search rather than a posting.

Move at the market's speed. A therapist who decides to look in this corridor is in someone else's process within two weeks. We put timelines on that in how long it takes to fill a healthcare role in South Florida, and allied health is less forgiving than nursing because there is no second-choice candidate waiting behind the first.

Where the geography changes the answer

Allied health pools concentrate around the hospital systems and the academic programs, which means supply is deepest through central Broward and the Miami hospital corridor and thins as you move outward. A facility in Fort Lauderdale or Miami is recruiting from a genuinely different pool than one in Homestead or the western edge of Broward, and the pay band has to acknowledge the drive. The same correction applies that we described for nursing pay across Miami-Dade and Broward: the county average is built from employers who are not your competition.

How we work these searches

Vyla recruits allied health the way the pool requires: direct outreach to working therapists and respiratory clinicians, screened against your actual caseload, productivity standard, and shift structure rather than a job description. As a healthcare talent acquisition partner, we will tell you when the range or the productivity expectation is what is keeping the seat open, because a therapist who starts and leaves in month four costs you the vacancy twice.

Tell us which therapy or respiratory seat has been open longest. We will give you an honest read on the range, a realistic timeline for your part of the corridor, and whether the candidates you need are reachable through a posting or only through a phone call. We respond within one business day.

Frequently asked questions

What do physical therapists earn in Miami-Dade and Broward in 2026?

Most PT offers in South Florida land between $80,000 and $100,000, with skilled nursing and home health at the top of that band and outpatient clinics at the bottom. PTAs generally run $60,000 to $72,000. Home health rates are often quoted per visit rather than salaried, which makes a direct comparison misleading unless you convert both to an annual figure at a realistic caseload.

Why are respiratory therapists so hard to hire in South Florida?

The pool is small, hospital systems absorb most of the new graduates from local programs, and the roles that need RTs outside the hospital — ventilator units in skilled nursing, long-term acute care, and home respiratory — are competing against hospital pay and hospital schedules. Night and weekend RT coverage is the hardest shift to fill in allied health in this market, and it is the one facilities most often try to fill with a posting.

Should I hire allied health staff permanently or through a contract agency?

Contract makes sense for genuine coverage gaps: a leave, a census spike, a new unit before the volume stabilizes. It stops making sense when the same seat has been covered by contract for more than a couple of quarters, which is when the premium becomes a structural line item rather than a bridge. Therapy and respiratory roles are also relationship-heavy with residents and families, so the continuity cost of rotating contractors is higher than the rate difference suggests.

How long does it take to fill a therapy or respiratory role in South Florida?

PT, OT, and SLP roles in a desirable location with an accurate range typically fill in four to eight weeks. Respiratory therapy, therapy leadership such as a Director of Rehab, and any role built on nights or weekends run six to twelve weeks. Roles that depend on applicant flow alone can sit indefinitely, because most qualified therapists in this market are employed and not browsing postings.