8.2% by 2027: the physical therapist shortfall

Your new-patient waitlist is not proof you failed to hire well enough. It is a math problem the entire profession is hitting at the same time. The American Physical Therapy Association's own workforce model found a national shortfall of 12,070 physical therapist full-time-equivalents in 2022, about 5.2% short of demand, and that gap is forecast to widen before it narrows, peaking at 8.2% in 2027 ("APTA Supply and Demand Forecast 2022-2037," APTA, March 2025). Next year. If this year has felt like trying to hire your way out of a capacity problem, the data says you were competing for a workforce that, nationally, does not exist in sufficient numbers yet.

What APTA's own model actually found

The forecast comes from a peer-reviewed study in PTJ: Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal, "Current and Projected Future Supply and Demand for Physical Therapists from 2022 to 2037: A New Approach Using Microsimulation," published alongside APTA's companion report on March 4, 2025. The baseline year: in 2022, the US had an estimated 233,890 full-time-equivalent physical therapists against estimated demand of 245,960 FTEs, a shortfall of 12,070, or 5.2%. Demand is forecast to grow 14.7% by 2037, nearly double the 8% population growth rate over the same period. Supply is projected to grow slightly faster, around 16.7%, which is why the shortfall does not simply worsen in a straight line. Instead it fluctuates: widening to 8.2% in 2027, then easing to 3.3% by 2037.

The forecast also modeled what happens under different assumptions. If fewer new graduates enter the profession than expected, the 2037 shortfall grows to 10%. If practitioners retire two years earlier than the baseline assumes, it grows to 6.6%. Only one scenario, therapists staying in the workforce two years longer than expected, brings the 2037 shortfall close to zero. Read that shape carefully: the worst point on the central forecast is not fifteen years away. It is next year, and the model's own downside scenarios are not reassuring.

So what for you: if your practice already feels the crunch this year, the model says the pressure is still building, not leveling off.

The capacity numbers behind the forecast

APTA did not stop at modeling. It surveyed its own members in 2024 to check the forecast against what practices were actually experiencing, and the answers line up closely. About 72% of respondents reported either a shortage in capacity to meet local demand or being at the limit of their capacity (APTA, March 2025). Among practices that can still see every patient who asks, most can only manage it by extending hours: the average new client waits 9.3 days for a first appointment. Among practices that cannot meet demand at all, the average wait nearly triples, to 27 days.

The exits behind the shortage come from the same survey. Nearly one-fourth of the physical therapist workforce will turn 65 within the next decade. About 5% of respondents overall said they plan to retire or leave the profession within the next year, a figure that rises to 20.4% among therapists aged 61 to 70.

So what for you: none of this is a reason to panic. It is a reason to stop assuming the fix is one more open job posting.

You cannot hire your way out of a national shortage

Here is the part most practice owners get backward. A local hiring problem, not enough applicants for your specific opening, is usually a pay, location, or reputation problem, and it usually has a local fix. A national supply shortfall is a different kind of problem, and there is no local fix for it, because the physical therapists who would fill your opening are, on paper, still in school, still deciding whether to enter the field, or already employed somewhere else absorbing the same shortage you are.

APTA's own report says as much. Its recommended policy solutions are reducing the administrative burden facing physical therapy providers, increasing payment rates (particularly from Medicare), giving providers more autonomy, and decreasing student debt to attract more entrants. Look at that list again. Three of the four require federal or state policy action outside any single practice's control. One, reducing administrative burden, is something a practice owner can act on this quarter, inside their own four walls, without waiting for anyone else.

So what for you: if APTA itself is naming administrative burden as a lever against the shortage, treat it as a real lever, not a consolation prize while you wait for Congress to move on Medicare rates.

The lever you actually control

The logic holds once the supply problem is accepted as real. If another physical therapist is not available to hire at any reasonable price, the only way to add capacity is to reclaim the hours your existing clinicians already have, but are currently spending on something other than patient care.

Documentation is the largest single target. APTA published a member-facing Practice Advisory on AI-enabled ambient scribe technology on September 19, 2025, specifically because AI note-taking tools moved from novelty to a mainstream documentation option for physical therapy practices within the past year. Whether that shows up as a feature bundled into your existing EMR or a standalone tool matters less than the underlying arithmetic: every minute a clinician spends finishing notes after a session, instead of seeing the next patient or leaving on time, is capacity your practice is already losing.

Billing and prior authorization are the second target, and the size of that drain is already documented on this site. Prior authorization alone costs the average physical therapy practice an estimated $34,000 and 700 staff hours a year (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, 2026), and a separate APTA administrative burden survey published November 12, 2025 found 91% of physical therapists link that kind of burden directly to burnout, the same burnout driving the retirement and exit numbers above.

The evidence points toward treating documentation and billing automation as a capacity investment, not a technology purchase. Waiting for the national shortage to ease is not a plan: even APTA's own best-case scenario does not bring the gap to zero before 2037.

So what for you: you will not close a 12,070-FTE national gap from one practice. You can close the gap between what your current team could see and what they are actually able to see, and that gap is entirely inside your control.

The math above is public. What is not public, because it depends on your own numbers, is exactly how many clinical hours your practice is currently losing to documentation, scheduling, and billing rather than patient care. Our AI Opportunity and Growth Assessment puts a number on that gap specifically for your practice, using the CARE Framework, before you spend another quarter trying to hire around a shortage that will not resolve locally. You can also book a free 20-minute call to talk through where the hours in your practice are actually going.

Related: Prior authorization's true cost for PTs  ·  The physio AI scribe decision  ·  7% of US physio clinics are now PE-owned

Core figures (233,890 FTE supply, 245,960 FTE demand, 12,070 FTE shortfall in 2022, 8.2% shortfall projected for 2027, 3.3% projected for 2037, and the 72% capacity, 9.3-day and 27-day wait, and retirement figures) are from APTA's "APTA Supply and Demand Forecast 2022-2037" press release, March 4, 2025, a companion report to the peer-reviewed PTJ: Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Journal study "Current and Projected Future Supply and Demand for Physical Therapists from 2022 to 2037: A New Approach Using Microsimulation." Both were fetched and read directly this session. The $34,000/700-hour prior authorization figure is CMS's own published estimate, previously verified on this site. The 91% burnout-linkage figure is from APTA's "The Impact of Administrative Burden on Physical Therapist Services," November 12, 2025. The September 19, 2025 APTA Practice Advisory on ambient scribe technology sits behind APTA membership; its existence and publication date were confirmed via APTA's own announcement page, not the full advisory text. This article is for informational purposes only and does not constitute clinical, legal, or financial advice.