Occupation / job
Massage Therapists
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
A $58,450 midpoint puts Massage Therapists $8,430 above the $50,020 typical American job — a 17% premium paid for the training, the licence or the conditions. It is not free money and it disappears the moment you stop meeting the requirement.
National employment is 98,790. At that scale hiring is continuous, the market rate is well established, and your leverage comes from being credibly willing to go somewhere else.
These support roles suit people who want clinical work without the years of schooling, and who understand that the physical demands and the patient contact are the clinician’s while the pay is not.
No verified preparation time is on file for Massage Therapists. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
A quarter of the field earns under $43,480 and a quarter over $78,320: $34,840 between them, a ratio of 1.8x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.
Even the bottom quarter, under $43,480, lands within $6,540 of the $50,020 typical American wage. The downside of Massage Therapists is not really the money.
Avoid it if you need the pay to reflect the clinical responsibility you actually carry; in these roles it does not.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 98,790 figure counts people already working as Massage Therapists, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
From $43,480 to $78,320 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $58,450 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.
Put in money rather than ratios: $43,480 at the 25th percentile, $58,450 at the midpoint, $78,320 at the 75th. $34,840 separates the quarter of Massage Therapists at the bottom from the quarter at the top.
Getting to $78,320, the 75th percentile, is worth $19,870 a year more than the $58,450 midpoint and $34,840 more than the $43,480 a quarter of Massage Therapists settle for.
The climb from $58,450 to $78,320 is $19,870; the drop to $43,480 is $14,970. A little more room above the midpoint than below it is the normal shape for Massage Therapists and for most paid work, and it is the reason the median is the honest summary rather than the average.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Massage Therapists is $28.10 an hour. The quarters sit at $20.90 and $37.65, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
Employers reported these wages for people already working as Massage Therapists. The self-employed are excluded, so $58,450 does not describe an independent doing the same work.
Treat the per-hour figure as a conversion. It assumes a flat full-time year against $58,450 because we have no verified record of unpaid hours or out-of-pocket costs for this work, and we would rather convert honestly than adjust invented ones.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else