Health and care
What does an Occupational Therapy Assistant do?
Looking after people directly, often when they are at their worst.
What the day is like
- Indoors, under a roof.
- Tools, materials, your body.
- People all day.
- Answerable for your own work.
The facts
- Pay
- $70,800 a year, median
- Occupational Therapy Assistants and Aides, May 2025
- Usually needs
- Varies; see the handbook page
- A year or two, often while earning something.
- Jobs
- +20% projected change in jobs, 2025-2035 projections
- Demand looks growing fast
What is good about it
- You answer for your own work rather than for other people, which suits more people than admit it.
- You can see what you did at the end of the day.
What people find hard about it
- Paperwork for funding
- Slow progress
- Travel between visits
One of the fastest-growing jobs in the handbook, and little known.
Will machines take this job?
Hard for machines to take over. Notes and scheduling are automating. Being in the room with a frightened person is not.
How to find out whether it suits you
Shadow an occupational therapy team helping someone adapt their home.
Would this actually suit you?
CareerDNA works that out from what you choose rather than from what you say about yourself: two minutes of choosing between real jobs, a few puzzles, and some questions about what you are like. It is free, it saves as you go, and it will tell you plainly where the answer is thin.