I just finished reading AMTA’s 2011 Massage Profession Research Report. It’s 66 pages of information that was created from several surveys conducted by AMTA and supplemented by government statistics.
The report covers many topics, including consumer demographics, information about massage schools and their students, where massage is fitting into the general scheme of health care in the US, and statistics on the practitioners themselves.
According to AMTA’s report, during 2010 the average massage therapist worked slightly less than 20 hours per week and made $41.00 per hour including gratuities. That was down from 2009, when the average therapist reportedly worked 20.4 hours per week and made 44.90.
In looking around for verification and figures to compare these to, I checked out the Massage Metrics by ABMP, and also referred to the AMA Health Care Careers Directory for 2009-2010 and the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). The BLS has faulty statistics as far as I’m concerned, because they are based on a therapist working 40-hour weeks year round, which is usually not the case. Their formula shows the median pay to be $16.78 per hour. Many therapists only work part-time, sometimes keeping other jobs that provide them with needed benefits. The AMA publication cites therapists who do more like 15 hours of massage per week and make between $15,000-30,000.
I also conducted an informal survey recently of the 1200+ massage therapists who are on my Facebook page. I asked how much money self-employed therapists charge for massage, and asked for their location, and was not surprised to see how much variance there is from place to place. I got everything from $35 in rural areas to $120 in some of the bigger cities. However, you have to remember that’s the gross, and doesn’t take into account that the self-employed have overhead that can really cut into that. By the time one pays for space, advertising, telephone, utilities, laundry, and supplies, actual take-home income is probably half that, if not less. READ MORE…
March 2nd, 2011 at 12:30 pm
what is interesting to me is that the AMTA in a survey of their members in 2009 found that their average therapist was seeing 41 client per month and making an average of $18,000 a year with an average of 7 years in the field. Yet the AMTA and massage schools uses the number of 15 clients per week and you will make then $29,000 a week, yet their own members were only seeing 10 clients per week. The AMBP numbers for 2009 were around $15,500 a year for their members..
November 5th, 2011 at 7:16 pm
I agree with you about the BLS’s faulty statistics. I have observed many stats that are inconsistent with their findings.
I live in an area ( bordering Virginia and West Virginia) where there is a wide variance of incomes and fees.