Speech Pathologist Salary

Speech-Language Pathologist Salary by Years of Experience

Early-career licensed SLPs typically earn lower salaries than those with more seniority. On the whole, it seems to take several years before SLPs earn significant pay increases, though it's difficult to differentiate the exact amounts because of incomplete data. For example, ASHA's healthcare salary survey shows only small jumps in pay among medical SLPs with 1-5, 6-10, and 11-15 years of experience, but this survey features a relatively small sample size.

We can partially corroborate this finding using labor market data from the analytics company Lightcast. This firm's large database of job advertisement posts shows little variation in starting salary among employers seeking SLPs with 0-2 years or 3-5 years of experience. In fact, there was only a $100 difference in median starting salary for positions in these two categories in the last 12 months.

It's worth noting that ASHA's school survey shows salary increases that are a bit steeper for education SLPs, though their pay was lower than medical SLP pay overall.

Speech-Language Pathologist Salary by Geographic Region

For most professions, the highest paying states and cities tend to be more expensive places to live — that is, the relatively high salary won't necessarily stretch further. This is true of speech-language pathology: The five highest paying areas are among the most expensive in the nation, although it's not a one-to-one correspondence. For example, California hosts the highest paid SLPs but has the fourth-highest cost of living, and Hawaii is the costliest state but only the second highest paying state for SLPs.

Lightcast grants some interesting insights into wage trends in the previous 12 months. According to job ads from this period of 2021-2022, the top three states for new-hire SLP salaries were Maryland, Illinois, and Rhode Island (though the differences in median salary were negligible among these three). Keep in mind that these numbers only apply to posts for open positions, not salaries for SLPs who have been in the same role for some time.

Speech-Language Pathologist Salary by Setting

As an SLP, your work setting usually has more influence on your lifetime earnings than other variables. For example, nearly all SLPs have a master's degree, so this is more a constant than a variable. But the type of SLP you become is very important, both for your career experiences and for your likely salary.

Common Benefits for Speech-Language Pathologists

Benefits are extra incentives that employers provide for employees. Common benefits include partially subsidized health insurance, paid time off (PTO), and retirement plans. There's no comprehensive data source on the benefits that SLPs typically receive, but we can make some strong assumptions based on the industries where they work.

Most educational and healthcare employers in the U.S. offer partially subsidized health insurance, which often also includes dental and vision coverage. Employers usually pay the bulk of the cost and employees shoulder a portion. The quality of these health plans differs — some employers choose to pay for cheaper plans that offer higher deductibles and less coverage to insured people.

Most healthcare and school district employees also receive PTO and paid sick leave, though the amount varies by employer. It's common for early-career employees to start a new job with two weeks of PTO, or 10 working days. If they work at the same place for years, they'll most likely receive extra PTO days at some point. In general, public employees are more likely to get PTO and paid sick leave plans than employees of private firms.

In addition, public school employees typically receive a retirement pension through their state. This is an incentive for public school SLPs to stay in the same state for their whole career or at least leave their money in place if they move because they'll need to pay a tax penalty on retirement funds that they remove from the pension pool early.

Speech-Language Pathology Salary Outlook

There's reason to believe that SLP salaries will grow in coming years, though this isn't certain. Comparing ASHA's most recent salary surveys to their previous iterations doesn't reveal much — their reports mention no statistically significant increases in pay from 2019 for healthcare SLPs or from 2018 for school SLPs.

The chief hope for increased salaries lies instead in the extraordinary demand for SLPs: The BLS projects 29% growth in new SLP jobs in the 2020-2030 period, which is much faster than the 8% growth rate for all jobs combined. Increased demand often leads to higher median salaries because employers are willing to pay competitive wages to land top talent.

Still, there's no surefire way to predict future wages, and a number of scenarios could play out. For example, public school salaries could stagnate because an economic downturn may force state governments to freeze or cut their budgets. This would lead to little or no wage increase for the largest chunk of SLPs, those who work in public schools.

Another possibility is that school districts may change the way they compensate SLPs. Kassie Hanson reports, "There is currently a big push to get compensated differently in the schools. In Nebraska (and many school districts in the U.S.), speech-language pathologists are paid on the same scale as teachers," while other professionals such as occupational therapists and psychologists are contractors who get paid more. Given the relatively large number of SLPs who work in schools, it's unclear how feasible this change is in the short term.

Bottom Line

Speech pathologists earn median annual salaries of $79,060. On the whole, healthcare employers tend to pay greater wages than schools or school districts, with nursing homes and residential care facilities at the top. As in most fields, greater seniority and supervisory responsibility typically lead to higher pay for SLPs.