Guidance on travel contracts, licensure, pay and life on assignment — written for nurses, therapists and allied health professionals deciding where to go next.
Insights
52 articles
Alaska is not a compact state, so you need an Alaska license. The total cost is $375.00, paid up front. You must document 320 hours of nursing work in the past five years. The temporary permit lasts six months and does not renew.
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Nursing jobs in Hawaii pay well above the national average, but the cost of living is equally high. The statewide RN median is about $136,320 per year compared with the national median of roughly $97,550 (BLS OEWS, most recent release). That sounds great on paper, but Honolulu one-bedroom fair market rent is about $2,016 per month (HUD FY2026), groceries run 50-60% above mainland prices, and Hawaii state income tax tops out at 11%. This guide breaks down the real pay, the real costs, and whether the math works for staff and travel nurses.
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Sunnyvale sits in the heart of Silicon Valley, in the San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area, one of the highest-paying markets in the country for physical therapists and also one of the most expensive places to live. BLS-based data puts the metro median PT wage near $139,000 per year (May 2025), about 35% above the national median of $102,760. The trade-off is housing: the median gross rent in Sunnyvale is $3,039 per month, so cost of living, not just salary, should drive your decision. A new 52-bed rehabilitation hospital is also under construction in Sunnyvale, expected to open in spring 2027.
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Alaska suits a PT who is comfortable with autonomy, weather, and distance, and it rewards that PT with broad clinical scope and above-average pay. Anchorage is the largest city and the easiest transition. Juneau offers coastal small-city living on the Inside Passage. Bethel is a remote, fly-in regional hub with the most distinctive clinical and cultural experience. To practice, you need an Alaska physical therapist license or a valid compact privilege, since the state now participates in the Physical Therapy Compact. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) puts the Alaska median PT wage at $115,280 per year (May 2025), about 12% above the national median of $102,760.
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Quick Answer In California, a physiotherapist and a physical therapist are the same licensed profession. The state restricts both titles to people holding a California physical therapist license, so you cannot practice or advertise as either one without it. If you were trained abroad as a physiotherapist, you can work here, but only after completing the Physical Therapy Board of California (PTBC) foreign-educated pathway, which includes the NPTE, the California law exam, and a supervised clinical service period. Pay for licensed PTs in California is among the highest in the country.
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Los Angeles is one of the largest healthcare labor markets in the country, anchored by major systems like Cedars-Sinai, UCLA Health, Keck Medicine of USC, Providence, Kaiser Permanente, and a dense network of community and specialty hospitals across the metro's sprawling geography. For registered nurses (RNs), respiratory therapists (RTs), and physical therapists (PTs), that scale means steady demand, but it also means pay and cost of living vary sharply depending on which part of the metro you work and live in.
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If you're a physical therapist or physical therapist assistant looking at Sacramento, you're looking at one of the better markets in California. The metro pairs some of the highest PT pay in the country with a cost of living well below the Bay Area. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data, the Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom area pays physical therapists a median of about $131,430 a year and physical therapist assistants (PTAs) about $84,290. Both sit above the California median and far above the national one.
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Two travel nurse agencies can advertise the "same" $2,400-a-week contract, and one can leave you thousands of dollars and a great deal of stress better off than the other. The difference isn't the headline rate. It's how transparently they pay, how well they protect your income, and whether they tell you the truth when it isn't convenient. Learn to read those signals and you'll never pick an agency on a flashy number again.
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