The Datum Report

Occupation 2223 · Professional occupations

Speech and language therapists

Half of full-time speech and language therapists in the UK earn more than £45,511 a year, and half earn less.

Speech and language therapists are responsible for the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of speech, language, fluency and voice disorders caused by disability, injury or illness.

How people enter it

Entrants require a recognised graduate or postgraduate degree that encompasses both theory and clinical practice. Successful completion of these courses leads to eligibility for a certificate to practice and membership of the Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists. Full membership is granted after completion of a year of supervised, post-qualifying experience.

What the work involves

• assesses, tests and diagnoses a client’s condition
• designs and initiates appropriate rehabilitation and/or remedial programmes of treatment
• treats speech and language disorders by coaching and counselling clients or through the use of artificial communication devices
• attends case conferences and liaises with other specialists such as doctors, teachers, social workers and psychologists
• counsels relatives to help cope with the problems created by a patient’s disability
• writes reports and maintains client caseloads

Also called

Communication therapist · Language therapist · Speech and language therapist · Speech therapist

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for speech and language therapists, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 3 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Clinical psychologists · Occupational therapists · Other psychologists · Physiotherapists · Psychotherapists and cognitive behaviour therapists · Therapy professionals n.e.c.