Exercise Physiologist Salary: Median Pay, Range and Pay by State

The median exercise physiologist salary is $59,460 a year, or $28.59 an hour, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) wage data for May 2025. The lowest-paid tenth earn $42,760 or less, and the highest-paid tenth earn $80,560 or more. How much exercise physiologists make in your case depends on your state, your credentials and where you work.

How Much Do Exercise Physiologists Make?

BLS counted 8,560 exercise physiologists across the country in its May 2025 wage survey. Here’s how their pay spreads out.

Half of exercise physiologists earn less than $59,460 and half earn more. The average, $60,940, sits a little higher because the best-paid people pull it up. Hourly, that’s a $28.59 median and a $29.30 mean.

If you want one range to plan around, skip the extremes. The middle half of the group earns between $49,620 and $67,230. That’s a spread of $17,610 ($67,230 minus $49,620), and geography does a lot of the sorting inside it.

O*NET, the Department of Labor’s occupation database, shows the same $28.59 hourly and $59,460 annual median for 2025 on its exercise physiologist page.

One more thing you’ll notice there. O*NET lists a bigger headcount, 23,900 employees in 2024, because that number comes from the BLS employment projections and not the wage survey. We use the survey count of 8,560 here because it’s tied to the pay figures above.

What Is a Clinical Exercise Physiologist Salary?

BLS doesn’t publish a separate clinical exercise physiologist salary. A cardiac rehab clinician and a bariatric weight loss counselor, two of O*NET’s sample job titles, land in the same category, so the $59,460 median covers both. A clinical-only figure has to come from job postings or a private salary survey, and those samples are much smaller than BLS’s.

What we can say is where the clinical work sits. O*NET lists Health Care and Social Assistance as the occupation’s top industry, and its sample job titles include Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation Practitioner. ACSM describes its clinical credential as a way to become part of a healthcare team, working with patients on education, behavior change and prevention.

The credential has a real entry bar. The ACSM Certified Clinical Exercise Physiologist (ACSM-CEP) asks for one of two paths:

• A master’s degree in clinical exercise physiology plus 600 hours of hands-on clinical experience.

• A bachelor’s degree in exercise science or exercise physiology plus 1,200 hours of hands-on clinical experience.

The exam costs $350 for ACSM members and $460 for non-members. Compare that with the ACSM Certified Exercise Physiologist (ACSM-EP), which asks for a bachelor’s degree and adult CPR/AED. ACSM says ACSM-EP holders work with people who are healthy or have medically controlled disease.

Does the clinical credential pay more? BLS can’t answer that. When you see a posting titled clinical exercise physiologist, hold its pay against the $49,620 to $67,230 middle range and judge for yourself. Our ACSM-CEP guide covers the hours and the exam in detail.

What Is the Exercise Physiologist Salary by State?

Pay swings a lot from state to state. BLS publishes a median for 42 states, and the headcounts are small enough that you should read each figure as a rough guide. Here are the five highest medians.

At the other end, Mississippi’s median is $43,060 (30 jobs), Utah’s is $43,850 (220 jobs) and South Carolina’s is $46,550 (230 jobs). Washington’s median is $38,250 above Mississippi’s ($81,310 minus $43,060). That’s a bigger gap than the whole middle range of the national table.

Now look at where the jobs are, because a big headcount doesn’t mean big pay.

Pennsylvania ties California for the most exercise physiologists, and its median is $14,400 lower ($62,440 minus $48,040). Colorado has fewer jobs than either but pays more than Texas, Michigan or North Carolina.

Two smaller notes. If you’re eyeing Louisiana (median $52,450, 40 jobs), its medical board runs a licensing page for clinical exercise physiologists, so read it before you pick a program. Our Louisiana state ranking shows the programs based there.

And two states with both real pay and real headcount are Wisconsin (median $63,210, 340 jobs) and Minnesota ($67,230, 250 jobs). Our Wisconsin and Minnesota rankings list the online programs based in each.

The complete table, with every state BLS publishes, is at the bottom of this page. A state missing from it means BLS suppressed the figure, not that pay is zero.

What Is the Starting Salary for an Exercise Physiologist?

BLS doesn’t report pay by years of experience, so there’s no official entry-level number. The closest signal is the low end of the range. The 10th percentile is $42,760 and the 25th percentile is $49,620.

Treat those as a floor, not a forecast. They describe the lowest-paid tenth and quarter of everyone in the job, and that group includes new graduates, part-timers and people in the lowest-paying states. Your first job could land below them or above them.

A practical way to budget: find your state’s median in the table at the bottom of this page, then plan your first year on a number under it, not over it. Your tuition plan should survive that number.

How Does Exercise Physiologist Pay Compare With Related Jobs?

Here’s how the median stacks up against jobs that people weigh against it. All figures are BLS May 2025.

Two things stand out. First, the top of the exercise physiologist range isn’t much above the top of the fitness trainer range: the 90th percentile is $80,560 for exercise physiologists and $83,100 for exercise trainers. Trainers need a certification and no degree. So the degree buys you clinical access more than it raises your ceiling.

Second, physical therapists earn $43,300 more at the median ($102,760 minus $59,460), and they carry a doctoral degree and a license to get there. If that gap is what you want, our guide to exercise science versus physical therapy and the pre-physical therapy online degree ranking show what the prerequisites look like online.

For athletic trainers, see our athletic trainer salary page. For the wider picture across the degree, read exercise science degree salaries.

Does a Master’s Degree Raise an Exercise Physiologist’s Salary?

BLS doesn’t split exercise physiologist pay by degree. So we can’t give you a number for a master’s, and you should be wary of any page that does without naming its source.

What a master’s does change is the path to clinical work. It cuts the ACSM-CEP clinical hours from 1,200 to 600. Three of the four programs below build in a supervised or practicum internship, which is where the clinical hours come from.

It also costs money. Here’s what four online master’s programs on our list charge in tuition before aid and fees.

Now do the honest math. If you’d spend $26,037 and don’t know how much more you’d earn, look at the postings near you. Note which ones say a master’s is preferred, and what they pay. That’s your answer, and it’s better than an average.

What Affects What You Earn as an Exercise Physiologist?

Three things you can check today.

Your state. It’s the biggest gap in the data, as the tables above show. Pennsylvania’s median is $48,040 and California’s is $62,440, a gap of $14,400 a year.

Your credentials. The ACSM-EP and ACSM-CEP are the two that name the job. Starting August 15, 2027, candidates for both must graduate from an exercise science or exercise physiology program that CAAHEP accredits, or one that has started the CAAHEP process, according to ACSM’s accreditation page. CAAHEP maintains the list through its exercise science committee.

Your program. That new rule means the school you pick decides whether you can sit for the exam at all. On our list, Lebanon Valley College and University of Mary are the two clinical exercise physiology master’s programs confirmed on the CAAHEP list. Northeastern State University’s Health and Human Performance bachelor’s is the confirmed CAAHEP bachelor’s. See our accreditation guide and the CAAHEP and CASCE ranking.

Is Exercise Physiologist Pay Worth the Degree?

It depends on what you compare it with, so here are both sides.

On the good side, this is one of the few job titles that maps straight onto the degree. O*NET places it in Job Zone Four, where most jobs need a four-year degree, and rates 2024 to 2034 growth as much faster than average (7% or higher). It projects 1,700 openings over that period.

On the harder side, 1,700 openings over ten years is not a lot, and the job count is small: 8,560 in the wage survey. The median sits below several other health jobs in the table above. And a master’s can add $19,278 to $27,750 to your bill before you know what it earns you.

None of that says skip the degree. It says pick a low-cost, accredited program, look at local postings before you commit, and be ready to move if the market near you is thin.

Which Online Programs Lead Toward Exercise Physiologist Jobs?

These are the programs we’d start with if the exercise physiologist salary above fits your plans. Each one links to our full review.

• University of Mary, MS in Clinical Exercise Physiology. CAAHEP accredited, $670 per credit, two years. It’s online with a one-week on-site lab each semester in Bismarck, North Dakota. The school reports an 80% cumulative ACSM-CEP pass rate for 2015 through 2025.

• Lebanon Valley College, MS in Clinical Exercise Physiology. CAAHEP accredited, 33 credits, three residency weekends in Annville, Pennsylvania, and a 600-hour clinical internship. Courses include two ECG interpretation classes.

• University of Wisconsin-River Falls, MS in Clinical Exercise Physiology. Asynchronous coursework, three starts a year, and an internship in cardiac or pulmonary rehabilitation. The school says you can finish in as little as 12 to 16 months.

• Northeastern State University, BS in Health and Human Performance. A fully online bachelor’s with CAAHEP accreditation at $278 to $279 per credit and 120 credits. It requires a practicum.

• University of Connecticut, MS in Exercise Prescription. Fully online, 30 credits, no GRE and no internship. The school doesn’t claim formal ACSM-CEP exam prep, so ask about clinical hours before you rely on it for that credential.

For the complete lists, use our ranking of online clinical exercise physiology master’s programs (15 programs) and online exercise physiology degrees (24 programs). If you’re weighing a graduate degree in general, our online master’s in exercise science ranking is the wider view.

How We Got These Numbers

We pulled the wage figures from BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics for May 2025 on September 29, 2026. BLS blocks automated downloads, so we cross-checked the national median against ONET’s occupation page, which lists the same $59,460. Growth and openings come from ONET’s 2024 to 2034 projections.

ACSM’s certification rules and fees come from its own pages, read on the same date. Program costs and details come from each school’s pages, recorded in the reviews linked above.

Wages and rules change. Confirm them on the BLS page and ACSM’s site before you enroll or register, and tell us if a school page contradicts anything here.