Massage Therapists
What the pay figures show
- Alaska comes first for massage therapists on every measure. $134,930 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $101,746 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For massage therapists, Alaska's $134,930 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $101,746. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$58,450
People doing it
98,790
Highest paid
$134,930
AK
Best off, really
$101,746
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$33,640
Highest tenth
$100,200
Lowest, really
$33,880
CA
States with data
50
National average
$63,830
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $33,880 to $101,746.
- This is a small job: about 98,790 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 50 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $58,450. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, Alaska pays most.
- Interstate variation in massage therapists pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $33,880 to $101,746, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 98,790 workers, massage therapists is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for massage therapists in 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Massage Therapists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $33,640 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,450 |
| Top tenth earn over | $100,200 |
| This salary | $58,450 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Massage Therapists
The national median for this job
$58,450around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $33,640 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,450 |
| Top tenth | $100,200 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Massage Therapists, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $36,480 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $134,930 |
| Spread | $98,450 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $59,370 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,096 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $134,930 | $103,491 | $101,746 |
| ND | $74,140 | $60,801 | $68,646 |
| WA | $87,360 | $70,288 | $64,744 |
| NH | $80,360 | $65,363 | $62,047 |
| OR | $86,970 | $62,954 | $60,116 |
| MI | $70,960 | $55,985 | $59,442 |
| ME | $73,290 | $56,762 | $58,460 |
| RI | $74,960 | $59,173 | $58,349 |
| WY | $61,980 | $51,981 | $57,217 |
| HI | $81,280 | $61,276 | $56,419 |
| MO | $62,050 | $50,058 | $54,552 |
| KY | $59,790 | $48,246 | $53,330 |
| ID | $60,420 | $48,379 | $52,916 |
| IA | $57,710 | $46,969 | $52,912 |
| NC | $60,650 | $49,001 | $52,052 |
| UT | $62,130 | $49,337 | $51,932 |
| TX | $59,370 | $49,884 | $51,334 |
| MN | $63,070 | $50,091 | $50,897 |
| SC | $58,000 | $47,253 | $50,714 |
| AZ | $62,400 | $51,161 | $50,602 |
| OH | $55,990 | $46,345 | $50,478 |
| WI | $58,070 | $46,830 | $50,303 |
| SD | $52,000 | $43,962 | $49,903 |
| IN | $55,590 | $45,236 | $49,072 |
| VA | $62,220 | $49,357 | $48,990 |
| CO | $61,060 | $49,263 | $48,592 |
| IL | $60,490 | $47,934 | $48,489 |
| PA | $58,300 | $47,234 | $48,445 |
| NE | $53,950 | $43,778 | $48,439 |
| MT | $53,540 | $43,440 | $48,136 |
| CT | $62,260 | $49,532 | $47,769 |
| MD | $62,270 | $49,620 | $47,727 |
| DE | $58,870 | $46,782 | $47,134 |
| NV | $53,540 | $45,199 | $46,607 |
| MA | $63,390 | $50,264 | $46,439 |
| NY | $62,630 | $49,718 | $46,195 |
| DC | $64,110 | $50,972 | $46,002 |
| TN | $50,070 | $42,411 | $45,843 |
| KS | $49,990 | $39,846 | $44,291 |
| AL | $48,930 | $39,398 | $43,791 |
| WV | $46,600 | $38,322 | $42,689 |
| GA | $50,820 | $41,077 | $42,479 |
| FL | $49,680 | $42,098 | $40,693 |
| AR | $39,990 | $33,291 | $38,483 |
| MS | $40,490 | $33,186 | $38,017 |
| NJ | $50,150 | $41,252 | $37,887 |
| NM | $37,840 | $31,925 | $35,320 |
| LA | $36,480 | $30,784 | $34,845 |
| OK | $36,630 | $30,464 | $34,506 |
| CA | $45,970 | $38,142 | $33,880 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of massage therapists earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $58,450.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for massage therapists. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, Alaska keeps the most at $103,491.
- The price adjustment for massage therapists uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — California anchors the bottom at $33,880. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for massage therapists, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $58,450, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for massage therapists is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis Alaska retains the most, $103,491. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for massage therapists deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.