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51.08Allied Health and Medical Assisting Services

Career paths in this area

Physical Therapist Assistant SOC 31-2021
Physical therapist assistants deliver the treatment a physical therapist has planned — guiding exercise, applying manual therapy and modalities, measuring what has changed, and keeping a discouraged patient working through the months that recovery actually takes. ⚠ A median of $68,380 on a two-year associate degree, with federal growth projected at 17% over 2025–35. ⚠⚠ Check which wage figure you are reading: the federal page covers assistants AND aides together, and an aide earns half as much and needs no degree. ⚠⚠⚠ Florida licenses this work under Chapter 486, and there are two examinations.
Occupational Therapy Assistant SOC 31-2011
Occupational therapy assistants deliver the treatment that gets people back to doing ordinary things — dressing, cooking, writing, working, playing — after injury, stroke, developmental delay or mental illness. ⚠ A median of $72,300 on a two-year degree, growing 21%. ⚠⚠⚠ And the finding worth acting on: it pays MORE and grows FASTER than the physical therapist assistant, and Florida trains a QUARTER as many. Four institutions, 57 graduates a year. This page covers the assistant, the aide and the therapist.
Medical Assistant and Pharmacy Technician SOC 31-9092
Two of the largest short-certificate routes into health care in Florida, paying within $60 a year of each other and taught at the same technical colleges — and the state treats them completely differently. ⚠⚠⚠ Florida writes down in statute exactly what a medical assistant may do, including venipuncture and administering medication, and requires NO licence, certificate or training to do it. It requires a pharmacy technician, working behind a counter, to register with the Board of Pharmacy and complete a board-approved programme. ⚠⚠ And the medical assisting programme has FOUR labelled exit points you can leave on and be hired at — the pharmacy technician programme has none.

Careers without a path yet

The U.S. Department of Education links these careers to this field of study, but nobody has written a career path for them on this site yet. Press Request to ask for one. Paths are written in order of demand, and you can follow each request in the career request queue. Requests are anonymous: your browser keeps a random ID so that pressing Request again the same day counts once. We store no name or email, and your network address is kept only in scrambled form, to stop abuse. The SOC number is the U.S. Department of Labor’s code for the occupation.

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