CF-SLP salary: what ASHA's data actually shows

Most salary pages for this question quote a confident national number for "CF-SLP salary." We are not going to, because that number does not exist in any published source we can stand behind.

Here is what does exist, where it comes from, and how far you can reasonably push it.

The honest headline: ASHA publishes no Clinical Fellow salary

ASHA runs two large biennial salary surveys — one for health care settings, one for schools — and neither reports a figure for Clinical Fellows as a group. Nor does its salary and wage data hub break results out by certification status.

That is not an oversight so much as a sampling reality. The surveys go to ASHA-certified SLPs; a Clinical Fellow is by definition not yet certified. So any number you see presented as the CF salary has been inferred by somebody, and you should ask from what.

The closest published proxy: 1–3 years of experience

The most defensible substitute is the least-experienced band ASHA reports. In the 2025 SLP Health Care Survey, median full-time annual salaries by years of experience ran:

• 1–3 years — $75,000
• 4–6 years — $81,000
• 7–9 years — $87,000
• 10–12 years — $92,000

The overall median for full-time SLPs in health care was $90,000, and $85,900 for those who were primarily clinical service providers.

What this band is not: it is not a CF figure. It contains certified clinicians in their second and third years post-fellowship, who out-earn first-year fellows. Read $75,000 as a soft ceiling on what the published data supports for a fellowship year, not as the expected number.

Source: ASHA 2025 SLP Health Care Survey: Annual Salary Report (n = 817 for the experience breakdown; survey conducted spring 2025).

School-based fellows are on a different scale entirely

A large share of Clinical Fellows are in schools, where the pay structure is not comparable to health care — the year is shorter and the salary schedule is usually a district grid rather than a negotiation.

ASHA's 2024 Schools Survey reported:

• Median full-time academic-year (9–10 month) salary: $74,849
• Clinical service providers: $71,000 in combined settings to $83,000 in secondary schools
• Median salary for working 11 or 12 months: $86,000
• Median hourly wage: $55.00, with a median 26 hours worked weekly
• 85% worked for an annual salary

Source: ASHA 2024 Schools Survey: SLP Annual Salaries and Hourly Wages (3,749 respondents, 25.7% response rate; survey conducted spring 2024).

If you are comparing a school offer against a hospital offer, compare the contract length first. A $74,849 academic-year salary and a $90,000 twelve-month salary are much closer per working week than the headline gap suggests.

Setting and geography move the number more than experience does

This is the part worth internalizing before you negotiate. In the 2025 health care data, medians by facility type ran:

• Outpatient clinic or office — $83,000
• Home health — $88,000
• Rehabilitation hospital — $97,000
• General medical, VA, military, LTAC or university hospital — $100,000
• Pediatric hospital — $100,000
• Skilled nursing facility — $105,500

And by region: Midwest $85,000, South $89,000, Northeast $96,000, West $110,000. In the schools data the state spread is wider still — California $110,000, Louisiana $57,704.

The gap between the lowest and highest setting is roughly $22,500. The gap between one and nine years of experience is $12,000. Where you do your fellowship is worth more than the experience you accrue during it — which is a real argument for weighing setting and location heavily when you choose a placement, and against assuming the fellowship year is a write-off you simply endure.

Salaried, hourly, or per visit

Do not assume an annual salary. In ASHA's 2025 health care sample only 37% were paid primarily an annual salary, against 45% hourly and 15% per visit. Schools invert this almost exactly, at 85% salaried.

This matters more for a fellow than for anyone else, because the fellowship has a 5-hour-per-week floor below which experience does not count at all, and hourly and per-visit work is precisely the kind that fluctuates. A slow month is a pay cut and a stalled fellowship at the same time. If you are paid per visit, the hours tracker is worth running against your real schedule rather than your contracted one.

A caveat we will not paper over

Every figure on this page describes certified SLPs, not Clinical Fellows. We have said so at each point rather than quietly averaging it away, because the alternative — publishing a confident "CF-SLP salary" with no source behind it — is the thing that makes salary content untrustworthy in the first place.

Two further limits worth knowing. ASHA's surveys are of self-selecting members and the schools data was collected in spring 2024, so it lags. And a fellowship offer is frequently below the band for the setting, because the employer is absorbing a supervision obligation — which is a legitimate reason for a gap, and also a reason to ask what happens to your pay on the day the CCC is awarded.

Sources

All figures above are drawn from these, and each is worth checking directly before you rely on it:

• ASHA 2025 SLP Health Care Survey: Annual Salary Report — the source for every health care figure on this page
• ASHA 2024 Schools Survey: SLP Annual Salaries and Hourly Wages — the source for every schools figure
• ASHA salary and wage data hub — the index of all ASHA salary reports, including trend series back to 2004
• ASHA SLP Health Care Survey — methodology and the full report series
• ASHA Schools Survey — methodology and the full report series
• ASHA school-based SLP median salary and hourly wage map — state-by-state school figures
• BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, Speech-Language Pathologists (29-1127) — federal wage estimates including state and metro breakdowns, on a different methodology to ASHA's

Confirm anything consequential against ASHA's Clinical Fellowship guide.