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146 New Athletic Trainer Jobs — Monday, October 5, 2026 - Michigan High Schools Need More Athletic Trainers, But It Goes Beyond Supply.
146 new athletic trainer jobs hit the market this week.
That’s a big jump from 107 last week.
But it’s not quite the hiring surge the headline suggests.
More than a third of this week’s jobs — 53 of 146 — came from the industrial setting. Meanwhile, only 85 jobs posted pay, dropping salary transparency from 64% last week to 58% this week.
And the divide between settings is getting harder to ignore.
Industrial employers posted pay on 77% of their jobs this week. Colleges did it half the time. Professional sports? Just 3 of 14.
There are some good jobs in that industrial surge, too. CIP Solutions has two $60,000 openings this week with a 9/80 schedule, every other Friday off, benefits from day one, and a defined advancement path. I’ve featured both below.
But the bigger story this week is on the secondary school side.
A new investigation found that roughly half of Michigan’s high schools don't have access to an athletic trainer. The easy explanation is that there aren't enough ATs.
I think that misses a huge part of the problem.
Sometimes the athletic trainer exists.
The job just isn't worth taking.
This week, we're looking at some genuinely strong opportunities, and some not so much . We have a $30,000 sign-on bonus, but also an elite youth sports academy job paying under $40,000 at the bottom of its range, and why the way high school athletic training contracts are bid may be helping create the very shortage everyone keeps talking about.
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Let’s get into the picks.
Athletic Trainer – Sports Medicine | Guthrie
Johnson City, NY | $29.62–$46.69/hr ($61,610–$97,115) + $30,000 sign-on bonus
Read that again. Thirty thousand dollars to sign.
This is high school and junior high outreach at Guthrie's contracted schools, with clinic time mixed in. Johnson City is in the Binghamton area, one of the more affordable housing markets in New York, so an offer anywhere in the upper half of this range goes a long way. New York income tax applies. Dual NY/PA licensure is preferred, which tells you the coverage map may cross the state line.
Sign-on bonuses this size come with strings. Ask about the commitment period and the clawback terms on the $30K. Ask where in the $29.62–$46.69 range new hires actually land. Ask how many schools you'd cover and how your week splits between clinic and sideline.
Athletic Trainer | Cerro Coso Community College
Ridgecrest, CA | $77,085–$108,919
The range is real, but read the fine print: the maximum starting salary is $6,748.98 a month. That's about $81,000. The rest of the range is where you grow to.
About $81K is still a strong start for a community college job. Ridgecrest is high desert and isolated, and it's one of the cheapest places to live in California. That's the trade: California pay without most of California's housing costs, but you'll be driving for a lot of things. California income tax still applies.
Ask how step increases work and how long it takes to reach the top of the range. Ask which retirement system the position falls under. Ask whether you're the only AT on staff. And ask about experience: the listing says "Min Experience: None," but the qualifications ask for two years of athletic training experience.
Certified Athletic Trainer | Grand Traverse Area Catholic Schools
Traverse City, MI | $30–$45/hr ($62,400–$93,600)
Keep this one in mind for the what's worth noting below.
A Michigan Catholic school posting a full-time AT role with a range that tops out at $45 an hour. Health, dental, vision, life, a 401(k), and a separate retirement plan on top. This is what it looks like when a school decides it actually wants an athletic trainer.
Traverse City costs more than most of northern Michigan (tourism does that) but it's well below big-metro prices, and Michigan's income tax is flat.
Ask whether "full-time" means 12 months or a school calendar, because the annual math assumes 2,080 hours. Ask how many sports and campuses you'd cover. Ask how often "evenings and weekends as needed" really comes up.
Health Care Services Provider – Athletic Trainer | USA Wrestling
Colorado Springs, CO | $75,000–$85,000
National team athletes, USOPC events, and a posted range that doesn't ask you to take a pay cut for the privilege. That's rare in elite sport.
Colorado Springs is meaningfully cheaper than Denver, though not cheap. Colorado has a flat income tax. There's a 403(b).
The role reports to the Associate Executive Director, National Teams. Ask who has final say on medical and return-to-play decisions. Ask how many travel days a year the event assignments add up to. Ask what the 403(b) match is.
Athletic Trainer | Children's Hospital Colorado
Aurora, CO | $60,667–$91,001
It's a hybrid role: one morning a week on the sports medicine triage line, then afternoons and weekends covering the JeffCo School District. You start at AT I in a Career Advancement Program, with a 403(b) match, paid parental leave, and an organizational performance bonus.
The ceiling is excellent. The floor is $60K in the Denver metro, which costs more than the national average. Know where you land before you sign.
Ask where in the range new hires actually start. Ask what it takes, and how long, to move from AT I up the CAP ladder. Ask how many schools you'd cover and how many weekends a month.
FEATURED POSTINGS THIS WEEK
These employers have committed resources to enhancing their job's visibility and confirmed their salary ranges.
★Associate Athletic Trainer | CIP Solutions
Libertyville, IL | Starting at $60,000
Philadelphia, PA | Starting at $60,000
CIP Solutions has two openings this week for Associate Athletic Trainers — one outside Chicago in Libertyville and one in Philadelphia.
Both start at $60,000, with the potential for a higher starting salary based on experience, advanced education, industrial athletic training experience, and certain ergonomics certifications.
The schedule is one of the bigger selling points: 9/80, meaning you work nine days over a two-week period and get every other Friday off. That gives you a three-day weekend every other week.
Benefits include day-one medical and vision eligibility, immediate PTO accrual, mileage reimbursement, professional development support, and a 401(k) with a fully vested, non-elective company contribution.
CIP Solutions is also athletic trainer-owned and lays out an actual career path within the company. The Associate Athletic Trainer role typically progresses to Athletic Trainer after 1–2 years, with longer-term opportunities in operations, leadership, sales, and marketing.
The work itself is industrial/occupational athletic training: injury prevention, ergonomics, early intervention, worker education, and collaboration with occupational health and safety teams.
What I'd ask: What type of facility would you actually be working in? What are the daily hours within the 9/80 schedule? Is it one dedicated site or multiple locations? And exactly how much is the non-elective 401(k) contribution?
Two different markets. Same starting salary. Same schedule. And a company that is at least showing candidates what advancement can look like beyond the first job.
What's Worth Calling Out This Week
Certified Athletic Trainer (ATC) | BJC HealthCare / St. Louis Children's Hospital
Town and Country, MO | $39,145.60–$63,710.40
The pitch: work with elite youth athletes in the St. Louis CITY SC MLS academy, for one of the top-ranked children's hospitals in the country.
The floor: $18.82 an hour.
That's for a full-time, certified, licensed healthcare provider covering a professional club's academy.
To be fair: the ceiling is $30.63 an hour, BJC lists annual raises and full benefits, and St. Louis is not an expensive market. But a range this wide tells you where they'd like to start. When the floor is under $40K, that's where a lot of offers land.
Prestige does not pay a mortgage. Neither does a crest on the polo.
If you apply (and some of you should, because it's real experience), go in knowing exactly what you're trading. Negotiate hard. Ask where offers in this range actually land. Ask what the schedule looks like, because academy training and matches don't happen on banker's hours.
What's Worth Noting This Week:
On Wednesday, WILX News 10 out of Lansing published an investigation built on data from the ATLAS Project, covering close to 800 Michigan schools over three years.
Dr. William M. Adams of Michigan State put it plainly: "There's about 50, almost 51% of high schools that don't have access to an athletic trainer."
Half.
The story lays out the usual reasons. The shift to master's-level education started in 2015. The number of athletic training programs has dropped from about 350 to as few as 200. COVID sped it up. Then there's the master's degree requirement without master's-level pay.
All true. But that list skips how a lot of high school ATs actually get hired.
Many schools don't hire an athletic trainer. They buy coverage. A clinic or a health system bids on the contract, the school picks a bid, and the AT is an employee of whoever won.
Which means the AT's salary isn't set by the school, and it isn't set by the market. It's set by the bid.
I talked with an athletic trainer this week who's living inside this.
They are experienced. They're employed and stable. They want to move to Michigan by choice. Nobody is forcing them.
They've been searching for seven to eight months and can't find a fair wage.
What they found is clinics and hospital systems winning school contracts by underbidding each other. A race to the bottom.
They tried to negotiate, but one clinic owner told them they can't pay someone fairly because of where they are priced on the bid.
Read that again. The company that won the contract knows exactly why the job is empty. The bid set the price before ever hiring someone and now the position sits open and has for months.
I pulled recent Michigan postings from the big health systems to go with this week's data. Henry Ford Health had five athletic trainer openings: Plymouth High School, East Jackson High School, Cranbrook/Kingswood, a float role, and its Center for Athletic Medicine. MyMichigan Health had three, including school coverage for Clare Public Schools and Harrison. Trinity Health had one more.
Nine postings. Zero salaries.
Here's what Henry Ford lists instead: "Competitive Compensation & Benefits, including a $5,000 sign-on bonus." The same posting mentions a $3 billion investment in its Detroit campus. It doesn't mention what the athletic trainer makes.
MyMichigan Health's school postings say you "may be eligible" for a sign-on bonus of up to $5,000. Also no salary.
I'd bet that's because they know how bad the number is.
But hey, there's a $5,000 signing bonus. That's supposed to make up for it, right?
A signing bonus is paid once vs. a salary that your COL increase is anchored to for years to come. Keeping that first salary number low has exponentially negative impact. "Competitive" may mean it is compared to the other positions in Michigan, but not the broader market. "Competitive," doesn't cut it when your competitors don't offering a living wage either.
Others shrink the job instead to make that hourly rate look better.
In June, HealthQuest Physical Therapy posted a full-time athletic trainer job at L'Anse Creuse High School. About $33 an hour. That sounds fine until the fine print: hours "capped at 1,560 hours per school year (approx. 3/4-time equivalent)," on a 10-month contract. That's $52,000.
But what are ATs supposed to do with that schedule?
Those hours are afternoons, evenings and weekends, the exact hours you'd need for a second job. The posting's answer is an "opportunity for limited clinic hours to supplement income."
Yes, the job comes with its own plan for making up the gap.
A better hourly rate on a smaller job isn't a raise. It's the same budget, cut to look better in a posting.
If the salary were good, it would be in the headline.
Here's the cycle:
Low bids win contracts. Winning contracts set salaries. Those salaries leave positions open. Open positions get counted as a shortage. And the shortage gets blamed on the credential.
Run the bidding logic the other way. If the lowest bid is the best bid, then the best athletic trainer for your kids is the cheapest one you can find. The one person on the sideline when a 15-year-old doesn't get up should be chosen on price, not necessarily expertise and experience.
No athletic director would say that out loud at a school board meeting.
And that is exactly the point.
The AT shortage is a pricing problem before it is a supply problem.
There's at least one athletic trainer who wants to be in Michigan, and I would argue there are probably many more, but not in the system as it currently values ATs.
To be fair, not every contract is a race to the bottom. Contracted coverage can work. It works when someone prices the athletic trainer in, not out.
So here's what I'd ask each side.
Athletic directors: when a bid comes in low, ask what the athletic trainer on your sideline will actually be paid. If the number makes you wince, that's the person you're getting, or the vacancy you're getting.
ATs: when a posting leads with a signing bonus and no salary, ask for the salary first, and ask what happens to the bonus if you leave early. If it's three-quarter time, ask what it pays per year and whether full benefits come with it. When you interview with a contract provider, ask how long they've held the contract, what it's worth, and how often the position has turned over. A job that's been open for months is telling you something.
Clinics and health systems: if you can't pay someone fairly at the price you bid, don't bid it. Winning a contract you can't staff isn't winning.
Adams also pointed out that some of the most important safety measures cost nothing, like heat and exercise acclimatization. Every school should be doing those tomorrow. But a heat policy doesn't evaluate a neck injury. A person does. And that person costs money.
This is why AT Finder counts, every week, how many postings show pay. It's not to shame anyone. It's because the employers who price the athletic trainer in should be easy to find, and the ATs looking for them shouldn't have to dig.
The AT Finder Talent Network is free for athletic trainers and always will be. Create your profile at atcfinder.app.
Until next week — stop looking, start finding.
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