What massage therapists earn, and the credential bar BLS lists for this field
The Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks massage therapist pay through its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program, the same employer-survey source behind every wage figure on this site. For May 2025, the most recent data BLS has published, the median annual wage for massage therapists was $58,450, or $28.10 an hour, across an estimated 155,400 jobs nationwide, under SOC code 31-9011.
That median sits inside a wide range. The bottom 10% of earners made less than $33,640 a year, while the top 10% made more than $100,200, a spread of roughly $66,560 between the two deciles. BLS does not attribute that gap to a single cause on this page, though the industry breakdown below accounts for some of it, and the self-employment pattern covered in the next section likely explains more.
BLS lists a postsecondary nondegree award as the typical entry-level education for this occupation, meaning a certificate or diploma program rather than a full associate's or bachelor's degree. That's a lighter credential bar than several other allied-health roles this site tracks, including dental hygienists, whose $94,260 median (May 2024) comes with an associate's degree requirement, a two-year program beyond what BLS lists for massage therapy.
BLS also notes that most states regulate massage therapy and require a license or certification, but it is explicit that standards and requirements vary by state, stopping short of naming one uniform national credential the way it does for more tightly regulated fields. Anyone comparing training programs should confirm the specific rules with the licensing board in the state where they plan to practice before assuming a program's credential transfers everywhere.
Where the pay is highest, and a self-employment detail the wage figures don't fully capture
BLS breaks out May 2025 wages across four industry categories for massage therapists, and the spread between them is wide. Offices of chiropractors paid the highest median of the four, $72,800, about $14,350 above the occupation's overall median. Offices of all other health practitioners came in second at $65,350. Personal care services, the category covering spas and similar wellness businesses, paid $56,230. Accommodation providers, meaning hotels and resorts that employ their own massage staff, paid the least of the four: $43,840, a difference of $28,960 from the top-paying setting.
The $35,800 median BLS separately reports for home health and personal care aides, an occupation that shares the 'personal care services' industry label in BLS's data, sits below every one of the four massage therapy settings, including the lowest-paying one. The two occupations are adjacent in BLS's industry classification but far apart in pay, a reminder that an industry category name alone doesn't say much about what a specific job inside it pays.
BLS's write-up for this occupation flags a structural reason the figures above may not match what a given therapist actually takes home in a year: "many massage therapists are self-employed," and part-time schedules are common, partly because of the physical demands of the work. Because of the strength and endurance needed to give a massage, BLS states plainly that "many therapists cannot perform massage services 8 hours per day, 5 days a week."
That self-employment note carries more weight than it might first appear. The OEWS survey behind every wage and job-count figure this page cites leaves the self-employed out of its coverage entirely, a limitation confirmed on BLS's separate OEWS methodology FAQ; this occupation's BLS page does not mention that gap itself. Both the $58,450 median and the 155,400 jobs total come from that survey, so they describe only the salaried, employer-payroll slice of the field. The self-employed share, the one BLS itself calls common in this occupation, doesn't show up in either number.
Job outlook: the fastest growth among WageLark's no-formal-degree occupations
BLS projects 15% employment growth for massage therapists from 2025 to 2035, a pace the agency classifies as much faster than the roughly 3% average across all occupations. That translates to an estimated 23,700 additional jobs on top of the 155,400 already employed, plus about 20,400 openings projected each year on average, a figure BLS attributes mostly to workers transferring to other occupations or leaving the labor force, such as to retire, rather than to newly created positions alone.
Among the 11 occupations this site tracks at massage therapy's postsecondary-nondegree-award entry tier, 15% is the fastest projected growth rate. The next-closest is medical assistants at 13%, then a wider gap down to dental assistants and phlebotomists, both at 6%. Pay tells a less consistent story: medical assistants' $45,690 median runs well below massage therapy's $58,450, while a higher-paying occupation in the same credential tier, licensed practical nurses at a $64,400 median, projects far slower growth, just 3%.
None of this describes what any individual therapist, in a specific city or specialty, will actually earn or how quickly local demand will grow. BLS's projections are national aggregates built from historical employment trends, not a guarantee for a particular metro area or business model, whether that's a solo practice, a spa-employee role, or the chiropractic-office setting the industry breakdown above puts at the top of the pay scale.