Top Metros for Speech-Language Pathologists in 2026: New York Leads, California and Colorado Pay More

Across the top 10 metros, LaborCove’s rankings highlight that strong markets for speech-language pathologists do not all look the same. New York-Newark-Jersey City leads the list with the highest LaborCove Geography Score and the largest reported employment count, while not offering the highest median salary in the top 10. Several California metros feature some of the highest median salaries but have smaller employment counts than New York and Chicago. Compared with the $97,870 national median salary, every top-ranked metro reported here has a higher median salary. At the same time, there is wide variation in employment count and Geography Score among these metros, underscoring the importance of looking at multiple metrics rather than salary alone when evaluating potential locations.

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ ranks #1 in LaborCove’s 2026 metro results for speech-language pathologists with a Geography Score of 77.11. Its median annual salary of $107,860 is higher than the $97,870 national median. With 15,260 speech-language pathologists, New York-Newark-Jersey City has the largest reported employment count among the top metros and matches the overall largest employment market value supplied in this dataset. Its employment total is more than double that of Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN (7,150) and more than three times that of Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA (4,800). Despite leading in Geography Score and employment, New York’s median salary remains below several other top-10 metros, illustrating that LaborCove’s #1 ranking is not driven by salary alone.

Several of the highest reported median salaries among the top metros appear in California and Colorado. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA has a median salary of $132,720 and a Geography Score of 60.00, while San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA reports $130,850 and a Geography Score of 58.79. Boulder, CO reports a median salary of $131,620 with a Geography Score of 51.54. All three of these metros have higher median salaries than New York-Newark-Jersey City’s $107,860. Each also reports a median salary at least $30,000 above the national median of $97,870. However, their reported employment counts are much smaller than New York’s: San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara has 890 speech-language pathologists, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont has 1,760, and Boulder has 320. These patterns show that some metros combine very high salaries with comparatively modest reported employment counts in this dataset, while still earning strong but not top-ranked Geography Scores.

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN illustrate another profile among the top metros: median salaries above the national level paired with relatively large employment counts. Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim ranks #5 with a Geography Score of 54.08, a median salary of $109,740, and 4,800 employed speech-language pathologists. Chicago-Naperville-Elgin ranks #6 with a Geography Score of 51.81, a median salary of $98,490, and 7,150 employed. Both metros have median salaries higher than the national median of $97,870, but lower than the highest-salary metros like San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara and San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont. In employment terms, Chicago’s 7,150 exceeds Los Angeles’s 4,800, while both trails New York-Newark-Jersey City’s 15,260.

Three additional California metros in the top 10—Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario—continue the pattern of salaries above the national median. Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom has a Geography Score of 51.52, a median salary of $126,360, and 1,030 employed speech-language pathologists. San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad holds a Geography Score of 50.98, a median salary of $119,690, and 1,590 employed. Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario ranks #10 with a Geography Score of 49.44, a median salary of $118,560, and 2,120 employed. In median salary terms, all three California metros here are above Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s $109,740 and above the $97,870 national median. Their employment counts, however, are smaller than Los Angeles’s 4,800 and Chicago’s 7,150, reinforcing that higher salaries in this dataset do not necessarily align with larger employment counts or higher Geography Scores.

Fort Collins-Loveland, CO ranks #4 with a LaborCove Geography Score of 54.23 and a median salary of $102,760. That salary is above both the national median of $97,870 and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin’s $98,490. Unlike the other top-10 metros, Fort Collins-Loveland does not have a reported employment count in the supplied data, so it cannot be directly compared on employment. However, its Geography Score is higher than Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim’s 54.08 and Chicago-Naperville-Elgin’s 51.81, while its median salary remains lower than that of high-salary metros such as San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, Boulder, Sacramento-Roseville-Folsom, San Diego-Chula Vista-Carlsbad, and Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario. Together with Boulder, CO, which reports a median salary of $131,620 and a Geography Score of 51.54, Fort Collins-Loveland shows that Colorado contains two metros in LaborCove’s 2026 top 10 for speech-language pathologists, each with a median salary above the national benchmark.

LaborCove builds these metro rankings using authoritative labor-market data for speech-language pathologists and our proprietary LaborCove Geography Score. For each metro, we incorporate supplied metrics such as median annual salary, employment, and other factors into a single score that supports apples-to-apples comparisons. The national projected employment growth rate of 15.0% is a context figure for the occupation across the United States as a whole. LaborCove’s current evidence does not include metro-level or state-level projected growth rates, so growth is not used here to distinguish among individual metros. Because the Geography Score reflects multiple inputs, a metro with a higher salary will not always rank higher overall than a metro with a lower salary, and a larger employment count does not automatically translate into a higher score. These rankings should be considered alongside your own priorities, such as preferred region, commute tolerance, and non-work factors that are not captured in LaborCove’s data.