Like many industries, I am hearing more and more that service providers are having a hard time hiring enough speech therapists to keep up with the demand for services.
As you may know, as many as 1 in 8 children will require some form of speech therapy during their upbringing. This got me researching the growing need for experienced professionals in the field of speech. I went to ASHA, The American Speech-Language-Hearing Association, to see what I could find.
The Growing Need for Speech Therapists
ASHA states that there will be at least a 25% increase in the need for speech therapists in the next 5 years. Maybe that doesn’t sound too remarkable to you, but let’s take it into context. There are almost 18,000 speech therapists in the United States alone. A 25% increase in the next five years means an additional 4500 will be needed. That’s pretty significant.
I learned too that part of the reason is because of the growing elderly population, but a significant (good news) part is because of the increase in early detection in children. A reminder that the earlier you get your child tested and diagnosed, the better their chances for good communication.
Initiatives at Case Western Reserve University
We’ve written before about what Case Western Reserve University is doing, both to impact the growing need for speech therapists, as well as to increase the number of minority students choosing this career path. Currently, over 90% of SLP’s are white females. This makes the work they are doing at CWRU so valuable.
In doing the bit of research for this post, I wondered too what the educational requirements were for SLPs. If you are interested in that too here is a great post I found
The Rewards of Being a Speech-Language Pathologist
Last but not least, from my experience, you will hear nothing but wonderful reasons to be an SLP. Here are some of them. .
