career path: Employee
what is equitable compensation?
By Les Sweeney
All professionals like and
expect to be paid for their
efforts. Otherwise, they're
doing volunteer work.
Compensation is no less
important for practitioners. While
most students do not enter
massage school with designs
on becoming the next Donald
Trump, everyone seeking to
enter the field expects they will
be in a position to command
compensation for their services.
Working for someone else
eliminates some of the anxiety that
comes with the financial demands of
a stand-alone practice, but there is no
hard and fast rule for compensating
massage and bodywork practitioners.
At spas, ABMP members report they
are usually classified as independent
contractors (meaning no payroll tax
for the spa and no employee benefits
for the practitioner) and are primarily
paid for actual client contact hours,
not all hours on a shift. The average
therapist at a spa receives just over
$43 per session, which represents 60
percent of the fee charged (meaning,
the average session costs $70).
Therapists received tips from twothirds of clients. Don't be shocked
if you hear elsewhere that lower
