Athletic training is a stable healthcare career with strong job growth, but whether it’s a good fit depends on your tolerance for long hours, your salary expectations, and which work setting you land in. The median pay is $60,250 per year, and the field is projected to grow 11% over the next decade, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics classifies as “much faster than average.” That growth rate and healthcare classification make it more secure than many careers, but the path to get there now requires a master’s degree, and the day-to-day reality involves trade-offs that push some people out of the profession within a few years.
What Athletic Trainers Actually Do
Athletic trainers are healthcare professionals who specialize in preventing, diagnosing, and treating injuries in physically active people. When a football player tears an ACL on the field, the athletic trainer is the one sprinting out to assess the injury, stabilize the joint, and determine the immediate care plan. After surgery, a physical therapist typically handles rehabilitation to restore normal movement. Once the athlete has recovered enough basic function, the athletic trainer steps back in to manage the return-to-sport process.
That distinction from physical therapy matters if you’re choosing between the two. Physical therapists work with a broader population, including elderly patients and people recovering from surgery who aren’t athletes. Athletic trainers focus on active populations and are deeply embedded in the sports environment, handling everything from taping ankles before practice to making sideline decisions about whether someone can safely return to play. In practice, there’s overlap: a high school that only employs one or the other may have that person covering both rehab and return-to-sport duties.
Salary and Job Growth
The median annual wage for athletic trainers was $60,250 as of May 2024. About 33,900 people hold these jobs nationally, and that number is expected to reach roughly 37,600 by 2034. That 11% growth rate reflects increasing awareness of concussion management, expanding roles in non-traditional settings, and a broader push to have qualified healthcare providers available wherever people are physically active.
The salary range varies significantly by setting. Professional sports teams and hospital-based clinics tend to pay more, while secondary school positions often sit at the lower end. Geography matters too. Athletic trainers in metro areas or states with higher costs of living generally earn more, but the national median sits solidly in the middle-income range for healthcare professions that require a master’s degree.
Education, Certification, and Cost
Since 2022, a master’s degree from a program accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of Athletic Training Education (CAATE) is the minimum requirement to enter the profession. Previously, a bachelor’s degree was sufficient. This change was made to better prepare athletic trainers for an evolving healthcare system, but it also added time and cost to the path.
Tuition varies widely by program. As one reference point, the University of Iowa’s program charges $630 per credit across 62 credits, totaling about $39,060 for the full program. Some programs cost significantly more, particularly at private institutions or for out-of-state students, though many MSAT programs charge a flat rate regardless of residency. After graduating, you’ll need to pass the Board of Certification (BOC) exam. The most recent data shows a first-time pass rate of 74.6%, meaning roughly one in four candidates doesn’t pass on their first attempt. It’s passable with solid preparation, but not a formality.
Licensure is required in 46 states and the District of Columbia. California has no regulation for athletic trainers at all, while New York and South Carolina require state-level certification, and Hawaii requires registration. If you plan to work in multiple states over your career, you’ll need to navigate different regulatory requirements.
Where Athletic Trainers Work
The profession is more varied than most people realize. The two largest employment sectors are colleges and universities (26% of all athletic trainers) and secondary schools (24%). Another 16% work in clinic and hospital settings. Only about 3% work in professional sports, which is worth knowing if that’s your primary motivation for entering the field.
The remaining positions are spread across what the National Athletic Trainers’ Association calls “emerging settings,” accounting for about 6% of the workforce. These include occupational health departments in manufacturing and corporate offices, where athletic trainers help with ergonomics and workplace injury prevention. Others work with military branches or in performing arts, supporting professional dancers and musicians whose bodies take a physical toll similar to athletes. These non-traditional paths are growing and can offer more predictable schedules than collegiate or professional sports.
The Burnout Problem
This is the part of the career that doesn’t show up in promotional materials. Athletic trainers, particularly those in the collegiate setting, routinely work 60 or more hours per week during competitive seasons. The schedule includes early mornings for treatments, full days of practice coverage, evening games, and frequent travel with teams. You often have minimal control over your weekly schedule because it’s dictated by the team’s calendar.
Research published in the Journal of Athletic Training found that the number of hours worked during the competitive season was the single strongest predictor of burnout, more so than personality traits or individual coping styles. In other words, burnout in this field is driven more by the structure of the job than by whether you’re personally resilient. Years of certification also correlated with burnout, suggesting it accumulates over time rather than hitting all at once. The researchers noted a significant limitation in studying this: the people who experienced the worst burnout had likely already left the profession and weren’t available to survey.
That survivorship bias is important. The average experience level among certified athletic trainers in the collegiate study was just five years, with most having been in their current position for only about two and a half years. High turnover is a real feature of the profession, especially in settings with demanding travel schedules and season-driven workloads. Work-family conflict is one of the most commonly cited reasons people leave.
Is the Investment Worth It?
The math depends on your program costs and your setting. If you graduate with $40,000 to $60,000 in student debt and start earning around $60,000, your debt-to-income ratio is manageable but tight, especially in a high cost-of-living area. Compare that to physical therapy, which requires a doctoral degree with higher tuition but also commands a higher median salary (around $99,000). Nursing, another common comparison, offers a wider range of entry points and often higher starting pay with less education.
Where athletic training shines is in job satisfaction for people who genuinely love sports and want to be embedded in that world daily. The work is hands-on, varied, and directly impacts whether athletes can perform safely. You build long-term relationships with the people you treat. The clinical and hospital settings offer more traditional hours and can provide a better work-life balance than team-based roles.
The strongest career outcomes tend to come from people who are strategic about their setting. Secondary school athletic trainers often have summers off and more predictable schedules. Clinic-based roles offer standard business hours. Occupational health positions in corporate or industrial environments provide steady schedules and growing demand. If you assume the only path is working with a Division I football team, you’re looking at a career that’s exciting but genuinely difficult to sustain for decades. If you’re open to the full range of settings, athletic training offers a solid, growing healthcare career with real variety in how you spend your days.