Athletic Trainer
Also known as: AT, ATC, Certified Athletic Trainer, Licensed Athletic Trainer, Sports Trainer
Prevent, diagnose, and treat muscle and bone injuries for athletes and physically active people, working on sidelines and in clinics.
Salary Range
The highest-paid specialization or seniority level for athletic trainers.
About 1 in 286 reaches this level
About 35,200 athletic trainers in the US (BLS Employment Projections, SOC 29-9091, 2025); only ~120 head-AT positions exist across the NFL, NBA, MLB, and NHL combined (~0.35%), with top NFL/NBA trainers earning $200K-$225K.
Salary data based on 2025 BLS, Glassdoor, and industry reports. Actual compensation varies by location, experience, and employer.
How to Become One
This career typically requires a master's degree. Here are the top colleges for it:
Cost to Qualify
Since fall 2022, CAATE-accredited bachelor's programs stopped admitting new athletic training students - the entry-level credential is now a 2-year professional master's (MSAT) on top of a 4-year bachelor's, confirmed directly on CAATE's own site. Program cost varies enormously by school: official university cost pages range from about $26,000 in-state to $118,000+ out-of-state, with several programs landing near $39,000-$51,000. On top of tuition, certification requires the BOC exam ($375) plus a $75-100 application fee. At the low end of the range the cost-to-salaryEntry ratio (salaryEntry $44K) is about 1.1x; at the high end it's 2.7x, crossing the 2.0 flag line for anyone at an expensive out-of-state program - this is a credential where the state you train in matters enormously.
Sticker price, not what most people pay — scholarships, aid and in-state status all move it. Room and board is shown separately on each college's page.
AI Risk Assessment
Athletic trainers prevent, assess and treat injuries, often on the sideline in the moment someone gets hurt. That is hands-on work with bodies, and AI cannot do it. A 2025 Microsoft Research study of how much of each job's tasks AI chatbots can help with ranked athletic trainers 495th of 785 jobs, in the less exposed half.
Where AI shows up is in predicting who might get hurt, using data from GPS trackers, training loads and wellness surveys. A 2024 review in the British Journal of Sports Medicine looked at 38 studies of machine learning for predicting sports injuries. Some models scored well on paper, but the authors found their real-world usefulness "can be limited," held back by small datasets and inconsistent definitions of injury. For now these tools are one more input for the trainer, not a replacement.
Demand is strong. BLS projects athletic trainer jobs to grow 13% from 2025 to 2035, much faster than the average for all jobs, with about 2,400 openings a year, as children, teenagers and college athletes keep playing sports. That is the rubric's "1 Minimal": AI cannot do the core work, and the field is growing.
What would change this score. If teams or schools start relying on injury-prediction software and wearables to cut athletic trainer positions, this moves to 2. We have seen no sign of that.
Sources
Ratings reflect a 10-year outlook based on 2025-2026 research, weighted toward entry-level impact. Individual outcomes will vary.
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