How are speech–language pathologists' contracts structured?

When we first launched our SLP jobs database, we thought the thing that would confuse new SLPs most about in their job search was 1099 vs W2. Or maybe benefits. But as we started building job posts and sharing them with SLPs, we realized that this—contracts—is where all SLPs need to start in order to understand job opportunities and pay! 

Here's the deal: Your contract structure has a greater impact on pay than your hourly rate. 

We're going to say that a second time, because far too many SLPs don't recognize or believe this: Your contract structure has a greater impact on pay than your hourly rate, and can cause pay to vary by tens of THOUSANDS of dollars. Locked in now? OK, let's proceed.

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Importantly, speech–language pathologists’ contracts are more diverse and complicated than most other professions. (Lucky us?! 🙃) They can be divided into three primary categories:

1) Salaried:

With a salaried contract, you’ll receive a fixed amount per month or year, regardless of the number of hours worked, even though you'll have a target expected number of hours (e.g. 35 or 40 hours per week).

Your employer will lead with telling you the annual pay, e.g. $85,000 per year. And in the Informed Jobs database, the pay will be displayed like this:

More about salaried jobs:

• 1099s cannot be salaried.
• This is the only contract type that truly guarantees your pay. If stability and predictability of income is important to you, we recommend finding a salaried job.
• The guaranteed pay, however, can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you get paid even if your client is absent. This is great for making sure things like cold and flu season don't leave you without income. It’s also great if census is occasionally low at your workplace. However, if you don’t pair salaried work with a caseload cap or fair productivity standards, it’s a recipe for overwork. Because with salaried work, you make the same amount no matter how many clients you see—high or low.

2) Hourly:

With an hourly contract, you are only paid for the hours worked. These hours will include both direct time (with clients) and indirect time (paperwork, report writing, admin, and other necessary job duties).

Your employer will lead with telling you the hourly pay, e.g. $45 per hour. And in the Informed Jobs database, the pay will be displayed like this:

More about hourly jobs:

• There are very few hourly jobs in our field. Especially full-time.
• Instead, most jobs that SLPs assume are hourly (and that employers present as "hourly" on other jobs databases) are actually PPV (below). Here are tips for recognizing this:
  • If you’re not paid when clients cancel or are unavailable, it’s a PPV contract, not hourly.
  • If your direct-time pay is different than indirect, treat it as a PPV contract, not hourly.
  • NOTE: This is not a problem in our jobs database. When we display an hourly rate, it's a true hourly rate, not a visit rate masquerading as hourly. We are the only SLP jobs database that does this, though, so beware when comparing our jobs to others.
• Pro re nata (PRN) work is usually paid per hour, not per visit (PPV). However, “usually” isn’t  always, so read your PRN job offers very carefully to see if they’re actually hourly or PPV!

3)  Pay per visit (PPV)

With a pay per visit (PPV) contract, you are only paid in full for the time you spend directly with patients or clients. You're either unpaid for indirect time, or paid a lesser amount (e.g. $20/hr).

Your employer will lead with telling you the visit or session rate, e.g. $60 per visit. Do not misinterpret $60/visit as $60/hour, as that's not the same thing.

In the Informed Jobs database, the pay will be displayed like this:

Notice how there's an hourly estimate and an annual estimate? We do this math for you by asking employers the right questions to be able to calculate it. This allows SLPs to compare PPV jobs to other hourly and annual rate jobs, without confusion. This particular job is $45–50/visit, and that contract detail (the session rate) is within the job post itself, under "Financial" details.

More about PPV jobs:

• You can be either 1099 or W2 in PPV contracts.
• They’re by far the most complicated (and potentially misleading) of all contract types, so we wrote an entire article just about PPV jobs.
  • The thing that makes them misleading is that visit rate can look really high, but it’s basically a vanity metric because it only loosely corresponds to pay. You can have a visit rate of $60 and easily make anywhere between $40,000/year to $100,000/year—and obviously our concern is that low end, not the high end, and should be yours too!
• Never trust what the pay says for a PPV contract in a jobs database like Indeed.com, because when an employer puts the visit rate in as hourly (which is the only option they have) Indeed's software then takes the visit rate and multiplies it by 2080 (40 hours per week, year round) to calculate salary, which is wildly inaccurate.
• Because of all these things, we strongly suggest that SLPs ALWAYS discuss pay in annual terms, not hourly or PPV! It's the only one to know and compare what you're actually being paid.

Primary take-homes:

1. SLP contracts are much more complicated than other professions. So don't choose a job without knowing which contract type (above) it is.
2. "Hourly" jobs in the speech–language pathology field are very rare. So if you're choosing a job based on an hourly rate (in any jobs database other than ours), you're doing something wrong. Instead, you need to be calculating or asking for annual pay.