Speech-Language Pathologists Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Speech-Language Pathologists worker at that point in the distribution, so $112,510 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 178,790 people in May 2024, 0.12% of every job BLS counted. Texas is the largest employer at 18,600 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 27.7% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Arkansas, whose location quotient of 1.83 says this work is 1.83 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

One in ten workers in this field earns $60,480 or less, and one in ten earns $132,850 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.2 to 1 and the annual gap is $72,370. The mean ($95,840) versus median ($95,410) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $116,000, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Speech-Language Pathologists stands number 175 by employment and number 148 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations, the group median wage is $98,340 across 71 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 3% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.9% of the group's 9,592,720 jobs. In 19 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $95,410, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 16,820 jobs, 9.4% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Baton Rouge, LA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $70,570 a year, against $135,190 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $7,951 a month before tax, $3,670 biweekly, $1,835 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($75,310) to the 75th ($112,510) is worth $37,200 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $104,951 would sit between the median ($95,410) and the 75th percentile ($112,510), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $75,310, is $20,100 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Healthcare Practitioners and Technical Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Respiratory Therapists, Psychiatric Technicians, Veterinary Technologists and Technicians, Surgical Technologists, Dentists, General, Family Medicine Physicians. The full directory is on the Careers hub.