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Schedule a tour nowHow to Calculate Massage Therapist Compensation Correctly
Posted on: September 26, 2013
Besides enormous emotional rewards, massage therapy careers offer high returns in monetary terms. A very favorable training cost/earnings ratio facilitates these financial benefits. Unlike many healing professions, massage therapy does not require a decade of academic study followed by a career-crippling educational debt load. Instead, the sole educational prerequisite that aspiring masseuses endure is vocational training that endures for a mere 500 to 1,000 clock hours.Other advantageous occupational aspects
Thanks to modern technology, massage therapists may easily mount effective marketing about therapeutic massage health benefits. Moreover, the medical community has embraced therapeutic massage as an effective treatment for many physical maladies. These factors add up to prolific employment opportunities for massage therapists.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (“BLS”) projects a “faster than average” 20-percent rate of occupational growth through 2020 for massage therapy. BLS further reports that over 80 different massage therapy sub-specialties currently exist. Many more therapeutic massage specializations and technique innovations will undoubtedly emerge as new medical research increases insight into anatomical aspects.
How much do massage therapists make?
There is no single accurate answer to that question. Per BLS, average annual massage therapist earnings were $40,350 as of May 2012. PayScale.com is a reputable website established in 2002 and widely regarded as the Web’s biggest private resource for salary data compilation and dissemination. Per Pay Scale stats of September 15, 2013, annual massage therapist earnings ranged from $22,130 to $123,163.
Pare down the pecuniary possibilities
Despite this wide variation, certain factors have a constant impact on massage therapist compensation. Physical location is chief among these. Practitioners in high-population major metropolises earn more than colleagues in less crowded locales.
Additionally, by all credible accounts, personal care services and medical offices consistently provide the most profitable massage therapy platforms. In theory, this means that establishing a private practice is the perfect path to massage therapy riches.
In practical terms, however, you must include the higher costs of big-city living and private practice overhead in your Realistic Massage Therapy Earnings equation. PayScale.com features a cost-of-living calculator at http://www.payscale.com/cost-of-living-calculator to help you accurately analyze attractive earnings alternatives. Simply input salary and city names to review a detailed comparative cost-of-living comparative analysis.
