Speech-Language Pathologists
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for speech-language pathologists. Best paid: California, at $118,970. Tax does not change that. Best off: Nevada, at $84,917 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- California's $118,970 median for speech-language pathologists survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: Nevada takes the top position at $84,917. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$97,870
People doing it
183,390
Highest paid
$118,970
CA
Best off, really
$84,917
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$62,900
Highest tenth
$134,160
Lowest, really
$62,380
SD
States with data
51
National average
$98,170
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $62,380 and $84,917. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- 183,390 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $97,870. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $97,870, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Wages for speech-language pathologists cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $62,380 to $84,917. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- National employment in speech-language pathologists is 183,390 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for speech-language pathologists, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Speech-Language Pathologists
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $62,900 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $97,870 |
| Top tenth earn over | $134,160 |
| This salary | $97,870 |
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 Speech-Language Pathologists
The national median for this job
$97,870around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $62,900 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $97,870 |
| Top tenth | $134,160 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Speech-Language Pathologists, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | South Dakota · $65,680 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $118,970 |
| Spread | $53,290 |
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 | $99,910 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $102,815 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $104,510 | $82,353 | $84,917 |
| NM | $98,690 | $74,754 | $82,705 |
| CO | $110,750 | $82,578 | $81,452 |
| TX | $99,910 | $79,117 | $81,417 |
| AK | $102,670 | $81,058 | $79,692 |
| OH | $93,300 | $72,617 | $79,093 |
| RI | $104,000 | $78,407 | $77,315 |
| WA | $105,550 | $83,084 | $76,532 |
| FL | $99,990 | $79,173 | $76,531 |
| DE | $102,760 | $75,571 | $76,139 |
| CA | $118,970 | $85,553 | $75,993 |
| GA | $96,760 | $72,671 | $75,152 |
| AR | $83,580 | $64,995 | $75,131 |
| AZ | $97,800 | $75,590 | $74,764 |
| MO | $89,280 | $68,380 | $74,518 |
| TN | $84,630 | $68,367 | $73,899 |
| SC | $90,530 | $68,831 | $73,871 |
| OK | $84,470 | $64,954 | $73,572 |
| IN | $87,360 | $67,740 | $73,484 |
| WY | $82,040 | $66,545 | $73,249 |
| PA | $92,960 | $71,373 | $73,204 |
| UT | $91,560 | $69,168 | $72,807 |
| MI | $89,120 | $67,989 | $72,187 |
| IL | $95,080 | $71,157 | $71,981 |
| NE | $84,350 | $65,036 | $71,961 |
| CT | $100,110 | $74,501 | $71,850 |
| DC | $109,380 | $79,450 | $71,703 |
| KY | $83,550 | $64,801 | $71,628 |
| MD | $99,190 | $74,262 | $71,430 |
| IA | $81,050 | $63,381 | $71,401 |
| VA | $96,250 | $71,768 | $71,235 |
| NC | $86,460 | $66,714 | $70,867 |
| ID | $84,380 | $64,572 | $70,629 |
| WV | $80,970 | $62,973 | $70,148 |
| NJ | $101,560 | $75,998 | $69,798 |
| MA | $101,310 | $75,356 | $69,621 |
| MS | $78,130 | $60,761 | $69,607 |
| ND | $75,240 | $61,553 | $69,495 |
| NY | $100,610 | $74,713 | $69,419 |
| OR | $102,660 | $72,619 | $69,345 |
| WI | $83,000 | $63,748 | $68,475 |
| MN | $89,380 | $67,154 | $68,235 |
| KS | $80,120 | $61,012 | $67,818 |
| MT | $78,740 | $61,136 | $67,745 |
| HI | $97,560 | $71,492 | $65,825 |
| VT | $82,090 | $63,273 | $65,476 |
| ME | $82,660 | $62,713 | $64,588 |
| AL | $73,660 | $57,501 | $63,911 |
| NH | $83,040 | $67,249 | $63,837 |
| LA | $69,610 | $56,099 | $63,499 |
| SD | $65,680 | $54,954 | $62,380 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for speech-language pathologists, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $97,870 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for speech-language pathologists, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is California, at $85,553.
- The price adjustment for speech-language pathologists 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 — South Dakota anchors the bottom at $62,380. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for speech-language pathologists are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $97,870. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for speech-language pathologists model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $85,553, which leads in California.
- Real-terms figures for speech-language pathologists 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.