What’s the average pay for a speech–language pathologist?

Before we started building Informed Jobs, we thought our field had decent local and national pay data available to speech–language pathologists.

(Bahahahahaha! *Cries in misinformation…*)

But it’s bad, friends. Once we started digging, reading, and analyzing the available data, we found that pay data available to SLPs is disappointingly weak and frequently misleading.

Below, we’ll explain what we DO and DON’T know (as of summer 2024) so that you can avoid misinformation pitfalls and better predict and negotiate your pay!

What's the national average pay for an SLP?

Disclaimer: Don’t skim this, then use it for negotiating or gauging your earning. Pay is very commonly misunderstood in our field, and 10 minutes of reading will put you so much further ahead! Trust us :) 

Brief highlights: 

a) Median hourly wage across all US-based SLPs, regardless of setting or contract type is just over $40 ( 1, 2, 3 )

NOTE: Don’t stop here. It’s tempting take this number and run with it, but this statistic collapses too many job types into one—including 1099 with W2, and salaried roles with pay-per-visit roles. For that reason, this is a pretty meaningless number.

b) Median annual salary for a 9–10 month school contract = $69,000 (1)

Adjust down if you’re early in your career and up if you’re more experienced. For example, if you’ve worked fewer than 3 years, the median is actually $54,909. If you’ve worked over 28 years, the median is $83,000. (1)

IMPORTANT: School-based SLPs generally don’t need (and shouldn’t use) this pay data when choosing a job. Why? Because most school salaries are public record, so you don’t need to estimate! Simply Google “salary schedule” and your city and school district, and you’ll find the exact salary to expect for the districts in your city.

c) Median annual salary for healthcare SLPs for an ongoing contract = $82,000 (1) And median hourly wages for Healthcare or Med SLPs (1) are:

IMPORTANT: While the median annual salary for healthcare SLPs is $82,000 (1), most healthcare SLPs are paid hourly or per-visit, and only 33% receive an annual salary (1). This means the annual salary number above represents the minority of med SLPs, not the majority. Then for all these healthcare SLP numbers, adjust down if you’re early in your career and up if you have more years of experience. For example, there’s a $26,000 yearly difference between early- and late-career SLPs. (1)

What's the local pay norm for my SLP job?

Because Kansas isn’t California!

First, note that if you work remotely doing telehealth, local norms infrequently apply to you, because most companies employing SLPs currently do not adjust for local cost of living.

Then—if you work for a company that does adjust for cost of living or it’s an in-person role, consider the following sources of information:

Consider state data: Both ASHA and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (see this exact same data in a different format here) have per-state data you can look at. It can help some, but it’s easy to misuse this data. For example, while it makes sense that California SLPs would make far more than Kansas SLPs (and that is helpful for adjusting national norms), you’ll still see big differences between large-city SLPs and rural SLPs even within Kansas, for example—sometimes upwards of a $15/hour difference. And interestingly, it doesn’t always go in the direction you’d predict. Because while it’s most common for urban areas to pay more, sometimes rural districts and hospitals are so desperate for SLPs that they are the ones who pay more than the big city employers.

Look at job listings in your own city: Job boards for your zip code can also give you a rough idea. Just be aware that they’re motivated to list artificially high rates because employers are trying to get you to apply and not necessarily promising an accurate rate.

Do the math to adjust for your own city: You can also do a cost-of-living adjustment to the national data to match your own zip code or city. When used in combination with the other strategies listed above, this can really help you adjust your expectations.

• First, get your city’s cost of living index. We like this website: https://www.city-data.com/. The cost of living index uses 100 as the mean (or 100 = the national average cost of living).
• Knowing that, you’ll multiply that index by national norms. If the average salary for an SLP in your setting and contract type is $70,000 nationwide, and your cost of living index is 100, you can expect a salary of $70,000. But if your cost of living index is 110, you’d take $70,000 x 110% to get $77,000.
• Also, if you’re considering a move to a new city, you can use a cost of living calculator to help you make the best decision on what kind of pay you’ll need:
  • This is also one of the best living wage calculators.
  • This cost of living comparison calculator can be helpful, too.
  • But do note that while this will help, it's not perfect. For example, Medicaid reimbursement rates don't align with local cost of living, but are better predicted by local politics, and this DOES impact local wages for SLPs.

Where can I find the MOST ACCURATE data on SLP pay?

We’ve spent many months digging into this and found that there are only two (reasonably) reliable resources for SLP salary data:

1. ASHA’s Annual Salary Survey (best currently available) and
2. The Bureau of Labor Statistics: Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) data (helpful only if you ALSO understand how it’s misleading for SLPs, in particular)

Let’s take a look at each of those:

Resource #1 (Best): ASHA’s Annual Salary Surveys

Find ASHA’s salary data here

Data collected:

Survey data was collected from 2,691 school-based SLPs in 2022 and 1677 healthcare SLPs in 2023. It is repeated biannually, so it’s always up to date.

What to know:

• Strengths: This is by far the most accurate data source we’ve found because ASHA correctly accounts for things most other data sources mess up. For example, most data sources will extrapolate 1099 pay-per-visit work to full-time work by simply multiplying that per-visit pay rate x 40 hours per week and including that into pay averages, which wildly inflates our “average” pay on most websites. In fact, the BLS does this, and it’s one of the reasons you need to be careful with that data.
• Weaknesses: Raw data are not published, meaning we can’t calculate anything other than what they’ve already calculated for their report.

Resource #2 (Okay-ish): Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) survey

Find BLS/OEWS data here.

Data collected:

People tend to mistakenly think the BLS is a survey similar to ASHA’s. But instead, this data comes from state unemployment insurance (UI) files over a three-year period. The currently available data was sampled through May 2022 and includes data as old as 2019 averaged into it, so it’s a more out-of-date than ASHA. And important to note the BLS data powers most other sources we’ve found, like this wage calculator. So because nearly everything online relies on that BLS data, and it’s pretty inaccurate for SLPs, that means most data online for SLP wages is also inaccurate, and the problem has just spread everywhere (also why you can’t ask ChatGPT or Google).

What to know:

• Strengths: They collect data from SLPs’ reports, not job listings.
• Weaknesses: The OEWS unfortunately collapses salaried, hourly, and pay-per-visit jobs, which results in all of their numbers being consistently inaccurate. If you understood SLP contract types, in particular PPV type, you'll quickly see how this could lead to really inaccurate numbers.
• Also, we don’t know the sample size for this, nor is that information available upon request (we emailed the BLS to ask!). This makes it tough to judge the accuracy of their data when we don’t even know how many SLPs reported into it.

In sum, you should use the ASHA data as your primary source, and you should use the OEWS only data with caution and a full understanding of in which direction it’ll be inaccurate for your job in particular. Remember that it’s collapsing all salaried, hourly, and pay-per-visit jobs together, and consider the implications of this for your particular role.

MYTH #1: “I can ask other SLPs on Reddit or in a Facebook group about pay…”

Asking fellow SLPs is a good idea *if* you know what to ask to not get useless numbers. And unfortunately, as of early 2025 we mostly see Facebook and Reddit threads with useless numbers. So listen carefully!

When you ask questions about SLP pay online, make sure to ask about:

• Location
• 1099 vs. W2
• How you’re paid (salary, hourly, or pay per visit)
• Setting

When you answer questions about SLP pay online, make sure to give your answers in annual pay, not hourly and not PPV, because of how easily these are misinterpreted).

You know what? We're going to say that one more time, because it's critical—always discuss pay in annual terms, not just hourly or PPV. The reason is because hourly and PPV rates cannot be compared, and they are not helpful when it comes to predicting your actual take-home pay.

MYTH #2: “I can look at pay averages from the Bureau of Labor Statistics data (BLS) to predict or negotiate my pay.”

As we said above, ASHA's data is good. But the BLS data is incredibly misleading due to how it's calculated. Here’s the biggest problem with most pay data online—SLP jobs are not all the same. As SLPs:

• Half of us are on 9-month contracts (school-based SLPs).
• Each year, it seems like more and more of us are being put on 1099 contracts instead of W2 contracts.
• Many of us are ONLY paid for direct time, billable time, or paid per visit.
• We work in a variety of settings with different pay norms, including schools, hospitals, private practice, and industry.

Job listing websites and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) collapse all this data together to find SLP pay “norms.” ONLY ASHA correctly these factors out, but their data set is so small that it doesn’t include relevant regional differences. To emphasize the issues:

• You CANNOT assume all SLPs work full-time, 12 months per year, and are paid for a full 40 hour workweek, where all hours are paid the same. BLS data does this.
• You CANNOT combine 9-month and 12-month contracts in a data set and then assume they’re all 12-month contracts. BLS data does this.
  • Example: If you have a 12-month contract, but 9-month contracts are in the data set, it will push your pay norms down. It makes sense for a school-based SLP to make $70K per year. That means they’re making $45 per hour. But $45 per hour on a standard full-time 12-month contract would be $93,600.
• You CANNOT combine salaried wages with pay-per-visit wages and average them to get hourly rates. It will cause wage reports to be artificially high or low, depending on if the survey asked for an annual versus hourly rate. BLS data does this.
  • Example: Salaried people usually work (and are paid) 40 hours per week. Pay-per-visit (PPV) and direct-time-only folks also usually work 40 hours per week but are often paid for more like 30 hours per week.
• You CANNOT combine school and healthcare settings in your data and call it all “SLP wages” because their pay norms are different. BLS data does this.
• You CANNOT combine the data from SLPs in administrative roles and the data from SLPs in clinical roles and assume they’re the same job. BLS data does this.
• You CANNOT use nationwide data to predict local wages. You also CANNOT split the nation into four quadrants and assume that’s local enough. You also CANNOT report wages by state only and assume that city and rural areas will be paid the same. BLS and ASHA do this.

How do you know if a data set you’re looking at is falling into these traps? A simple hint is if the hourly averages multiplied by 2080 = the annual averages, you can trash that data set for SLPs. Our jobs don’t work like that.

Explanation: Hold your hats for some fun math! So most jobs are paid an annual salaried rate, and you can assume that most people who work full-time work 2080 hours per year. This is a simple standard calculation used in HR and labor markets when they have to collapse lots and lots of contracts into one. So if you see an annual salary average of $93,600 per year, next to an hourly average of $45, the number to get from one to the other is 2080 (multiply or divide by). See that? And it should send off major warning alarms that you can’t use that data set.

Because while for some fields this shakes out ok, it DOES NOT for SLPs. What this means is the data set doesn’t account for jobs that aren’t paid 2080 hours per year, which is well over half of all SLP jobs. Think about it like this—are school-based SLPs working 40 hour weeks year-round (2080 hours)? No. When you’re paid per-visit are you paid for 40 hours per week, year-round? Also no. Also, if the data set allows BOTH hourly rates AND annual salaries to feed into the same data set, then calculates one from the other, it’ll always be wrong for SLPs.

MYTH #3: “I can use job boards, Google SLP pay, or ask ChatGPT and get a decent answer.”

No. As we spent more and more time Googling SLP pay to research Informed Jobs, we realized that most salary data you see online is from job listings, NOT actual SLP pay data (from either ASHA or BLS). Here’s why that happens and how it’s a problem:

• Job listing data is easy to get, because it’s online and easy to extract from the internet. Employers post rates online daily in order to hire. But SLPs don’t post their real pay rates online unless asked to.
• Journalists use this job listing data to report what SLPs make. However, they don’t usually realize we aren’t all on 12-month full-time salaried contracts (see Myth #2, above), and that our field is split between W2 and 1099 work. They also don’t realize most job posts are ads (see next point).
• Job listing sites artificially inflate pay rates for marketing purposes. The goal of most job website is to make employers (their customer) happy, and the goal of most employers is to get their jobs filled. One way job sites do this is by prompting employers to prompt employers to adjust their advertised pay ranges upward in order to be “competitive”.
  • Example: An employer may be ready to hire at around $50/hour. They get on the job website to post this, and it encourages a range. So they think, “Sure, I guess I’ll put a range then”. So they list $45–55. The website then prompts the employer to increase the upper end of this range in order to get more job views. So the employer does. They think, “It’s telling me to… and I guess I’d pay $65 on the upper end in the right circumstance, so sure”. So the listed rate is $45–$65 even though the employer very much intends to pay $50 or below. Then, people looking at this data assume it’s an accurate reflection of what SLPs are being paid, and worse yet, an accurate way to extrapolate an average of what SLPs are paid.

In sum, the pay ranges listed on job boards aren’t averages, but people pulling this data who have no experience with how the data was created in the first place treat them as such.

Want to see an example of the silly stuff these job websites spit out?

This is a screenshot taken from Glassdoor’s website, showing average pay for SLPs in the U.S. Screenshot taken on August 12th, 2024:

For the grad students or non-SLPs looking at this screenshot, and wondering if it’s real– it’s about $45,000 too high, on both ends.

How did this happen?! By a) pulling data from job posts instead of real SLPs, and b) collapsing hourly and pay-per-visit roles into a dataset and assuming they’re all full-time 12-month salaried jobs. Yikes.

P.S. As Informed Jobs grows, it can become a reliable source for wage data, because we don't make these mistakes. But as of February 2025 it's not large enough. So continue using ASHA's wage data for now.

Want better salary data for our field?

We want that, too, and it’s one of our goals at Informed Jobs! Help us collect better salary data by sharing yours here.

Note: Viewing jobs and salary data will ALWAYS be free at Informed Jobs. The wage data that SLPs share freely will never be behind a paywall!

Primary Resources:

1. American Speech–Language–Hearing Association. (2022–2023). Salary and Wage Data. https://www.asha.org/research/memberdata/salary-data/.
2. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. (2023, May). Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2023, Speech–Language Pathologists. https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes291127.htm
3. Payscale. (n.d.) Average Speech-Language Pathologist (SLP) Hourly Pay. https://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Speech-Language_Pathologist_(SLP)/Hourly_Rate