How are speech–language pathologists paid?

When we first started Informed Jobs, we thought the thing that would confuse new SLPs most about their job search was 1099 vs W2. Or maybe benefits. But as we started building job posts and sharing them with SLPs, we realized that this—contracts—is where all SLPs need to start in order to better understand job opportunities! Because even if they understand some of those more complicated aspects of jobs, if they don't understand this foundational knowledge they're still up a creek without a paddle.

Surprisingly, speech–language pathologists’ contracts are much more complicated than most professions when it comes to predicting take-home pay. They can be divided into three primary categories:

1) Salaried:

With a salaried contract, you’ll receive a fixed amount per year regardless of the number of hours worked.

Your employer will lead with telling you the annual pay, e.g. $85,000 per year. And in the Informed Jobs database, the pay will be displayed like this:

More about salaried jobs:

• 1099s cannot be salaried.
• This is the only contract type that truly guarantees your pay. If stability and predictability of income is important to you, we recommend finding a salaried job.
• The guaranteed pay, however, can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you get paid even if you’re not working with a client. This is great for making sure things like client cancellations don't leave you unpaid. It’s also great if census is low at your workplace. However, if you don’t pair salaried work with a caseload cap or fair productivity standards, it’s a recipe for overwork. Because with salaried work, you make the same amount no matter how many clients you see—high or low volume.

2) Hourly:

With an hourly contract, you are only paid for the hours worked. These hours will include both direct time (with clients) and indirect time (paperwork, report writing, admin, and other necessary job duties).

Your employer will lead with telling you the hourly pay, e.g. $45 per hour. And in the Informed Jobs database, the pay will be displayed like this:

More about hourly jobs:

• You can be either 1099 or W2 in hourly contracts.
• Hourly contracts can have pretty stable and predictable income, just like salaried.
  • This is a detail you need to pay attention to when you’re reading the job description. For example, if you’re hired for 10 or 20 hours per week, are those hours guaranteed? And if not, under what circumstances would you not be paid the 10 or 20 hours you’d planned to work?
• However, it’s common for employers to misrepresent PPV contracts (below) as hourly.
  • If you’re not paid when clients cancel or are unavailable, it’s a PPV contract, not hourly.
  • True hourly contracts—where you’re paid for both direct and indirect time—are the least common contract type for SLPs. Most contracts are salaried or PPV.
  • NOTE: Jobs listed as hourly when they're really PPV doesn't happen in the Informed Jobs database because we ask the questions needed to catch this.
• Pro re nata (PRN) work is usually paid per hour, not per visit. However, “usually” isn’t  always, so read your PRN job offers carefully to see if they’re actually hourly or PPV!

3)  Pay per visit (PPV)

With a pay per visit (PPV) contract, you are only paid for the time you spend directly with patients or clients.

Your employer will lead with telling you the visit or session rate, e.g. $60 per visit. And in the Informed Jobs database, the pay will be displayed like this:

Then the contract details (session rate) will be within the job post itself.

More about PPV jobs:

• You can be either 1099 or W2 in PPV contracts.
• They’re by far the most complicated (and potentially misleading) of all contract types, so we wrote an entire article just about PPV jobs.
  • The thing that makes them misleading is that visit rate can look really high, but it’s basically a vanity metric because it only loosely corresponds to pay. You can have a visit rate of $60 and easily make anywhere between $40,000/year to $100,000/year—and obviously our concern is that low end, not the high end, and should be yours too!
• Visits don’t correspond to hours unless the clinic has rules to translate that. Meaning, you might be paid $60 per visit regardless of if the visit is 30 minutes or an hour depending on the clinic’s rules.
• Never trust what the pay says for a PPV contract in a jobs database like Indeed.com, because when an employer puts the visit rate in as hourly (which is what almost always happens) then Indeed's software takes the visit rate and multiplies it by 2080 (40 hours per week, year round) to calculate salary, which is wildly inaccurate. Read more here on PPV contracts or here on how the internet tends to mess up projections of SLP pay.
• Because of all these things, we strongly suggest that SLPs ALWAYS discuss pay in annual terms, not hourly or PPV! It's the only one to know and compare what you're actually being paid.

Now that you understand contract type, we recommend reading about 1099 vs W2 job types and how to predict your pay!