What “Informed Pay” means

First, most job boards grossly misrepresent SLP pay. We correct for that by accurately calculating hourly and annual pay for all job posts, represented like this:

• Salaried jobs look like this. Annual pay in dark background; other numbers calculated:

• Hourly jobs look like this. Hourly pay in dark background; other numbers calculated:

• Pay Per Visit jobs look like this. All values calculated by getting estimates directly from employer payrolls:

For more on salaried vs hourly vs pay per visit contracts, read this resource. Now we'll move on to Informed Pay, which is the final number in each line, and uniquely valuable!

Informed Pay is our unique and proprietary metric of hourly value that allows you to directly compare pay across jobs within our database. It looks like this, on each of our job posts:

It’s benchmarked from W2 roles, and accounts for a job’s estimated paid hours, along with the average value of benefits listed (for W2), or the incremental self-employment tax (7%) and average cost of 1099-specific expenses (for 1099).

This metric is helpful to speech–language–pathologists in particular, because we are often comparing jobs that cannot be compared without a) data from the employer and b) running calculations based on this data. This is most relevant in the comparison of 1099 vs W2 roles and salaried vs pay per visit roles— both which SLPs are considering every time they’re on the job hunt!

Quick tips:

DO:

• Use Informed Pay to quickly compare jobs in our database to each other, on the metric of pay.
• Recognize that you don't have to do extra  math beyond this. We understand SLP jobs, so we've already asked all the right questions (e.g. about pay for indirect time, if you're paid for client cancellations, etc.) and run the math. 

DO NOT:

• Compare Informed Pay rates to contracted rates outside our database—they’re not the same thing.
  • To compare jobs, use our Pay Calculator (Informed Pay is something we do for you; the Pay Calculator is something you can do for yourself. Compare them here.)
• Assume Informed Pay is your after-tax take home pay. It’s not; it’s just a comparison tool. To precisely calculate true take-home pay down the dollar that will land in your checking account, you’d want to use another calculator that considers state and local tax. And if 1099, you may also need an accountant.

Why use Informed Pay? Won’t it just confuse SLPs?

Most SLPs are already incredibly confused (or misled) by job post norms in our field, and the Informed Pay metric simply lifts the veil.

For example, one of the most common missteps we see novice job-seekers make when comparing SLP jobs to each other is to think that these two jobs pay the same:

• Job 1: $50/hour, W2, full-time, salaried
• Job 2: $50/hour, 1099, billable hours only 

…whereas an employer or seasoned SLP knows that the first job pays a lot better—and how much better depends on several factors. For example, Job 1 will pay around $104,000 per year, whereas Job 2 could pay anywhere from $50,000 to over $90,000 per year, depending entirely on other undisclosed details that we collect for all our jobs. And because Job 1 is W2, it could be even more valuable if it also includes employer-provided benefits like health insurance or a retirement plan. And with Job 2 will, no matter what the SLP will be paying 7% of their income in self-employment taxes that otherwise would have been paid by their employer were it W2.

Employers know all this, because contracts and business finance are among their areas of expertise. They’re writing contracts and making financial decisions regularly, based on how those contracts are set up. They follow employment and tax laws, and know the impact on their bottom line. Employers already know the unspoken implications of different contract types, so they don't (as much) need someone asking all the right questions and running the math.

But most SLPs don’t know these things, because it's not their area of expertise. Not only do they not typically have the same HR and tax knowledge, but SLPs only think about this occasionally– when they’re on the job market! Whereas it's part of employers' work every day. So while we believe that most employers have good intentions and aren’t trying to purposely mislead SLPs, that doesn’t change the fact that job posts in our field are misleading if you don’t have the expertise to make sense of them at first glance. 

We believe clear, predictable pay information should be a minimum ethical requirement for any job post. Employers on Informed Jobs agree—by participating in our posting process, they commit to high levels of transparency.

***Why do SLPs need this, whereas other professions don't really? Our field has uniquely diverse contracts that make calculating pay much, much more complicated that other professions, like teachers or engineers. Read more about our contracts here.

How is Informed Pay calculated?

The math section! Follow along to understand exactly what goes into our calculations.

First, we do have to make some assumptions because the data we don’t let job-seekers input personal data. So the assumptions we make to standardize this process are:

1. The assumption that the job seeker is a young single person with no dependents and no family on their health insurance (if applicable),
2. And national (rather than local or personal) averages for all other input numbers in the calculation.

As such, Informed Pay then uses each of the following numbers: 

• effective tax bracket of 22%,
• value of employer-provided portion of health insurance benefits estimated at $4320/year (unless otherwise specified),
• value of 401K benefit estimated at median 3% match (unless otherwise specified), or value of other retirement account type
• self-employment tax paid above what would occur for W2 (incremental, 7%),
• insurance estimated at $300/year (1099 only),
• supplies and job expenses for 1099s estimated at $400/year above SLP W2 role norms, minus the value of write-offs (1099 only), 

• and any other financial benefits included in the job listing (e.g. unrestricted stipends for W2)

   

We then take these numbers along with your estimated paid work hours and the hourly or annual rate in your contract, to include the value of benefits, cost of self-employment tax, and cost of expenses unique to contract type (1099). All of these are accounted for so that these job types can be directly compared.

Below is a spreadsheet to help you understand the difference between contracted pay and Informed Pay, and give you a line-by-line explanation of what’s included.

Remember– Informed Pay doesn’t take individual data into account. So if you’d like to take it a step further, you’d want to use our Pay Calculator. Additional options and further descriptions of various external online calculators are here. 

Informed Pay and our Pay Calculators were developed in collaboration with and approved by multiple licensed CPAs at Ong & Company.