There Seems to Be a Disconnect

I decided that I rant enough to warrant a new visual!!

I am a member of several music therapy groups over on Facebook, and I keep noticing that there is a huge disconnect between employers and potential employees. I spend lots of my quiet time (and there is LOTS of that right now) thinking about this miscommunication or misalignment or whatever is actually happening and wondering if there is a way to bring the two parties together a bit more than they are right now.

Here's the deal. There are wonderful music therapy employers out there who cannot find music therapists to fill jobs. There are music therapists out there (I don't know them, so I can't decide whether they are wonderful or not) who lament that they cannot find a job. The solution seems easy to me, but I know that it isn't all that easy.

When I'm asked about the music therapy job market, I state that there are plenty of jobs out there (and I do believe this is true), but that you have to go where the jobs are. If you are tied to a particular geographical location, then your opportunities may be limited. I believe this is also true. I get daily job listings for music therapists, and there seem to be plenty of positions that go open for months for some reason.

Now, I'm not saying that the jobs being offered are ideal for music therapists, but from what I see, there seems to be a bit of a disconnect between what is appropriate for an entry-level therapist's salary and the expectations of many of the people complaining that they cannot find a job. I saw someone complain that they only get paid what a teacher gets paid. Seriously?? Therapists in my district do not get paid on the teacher pay scale - they wish they did. (In all honesty, I am the only therapist in the district that does get paid on the teacher pay scale because I have been around since before they changed the contract to exclude therapists from the scale.) There has to be some sort of reality check happening here.

Hey folks, being a music therapist is not going to be extremely lucrative. 

If anyone told you that you could be anything other than modestly comfortable in this human-service based profession, then they were wrong. You will not get rich doing music therapy. Get used to that idea. You will have to make sacrifices to pay your student loans and you will have to budget your money very carefully. This is a reality for many more professions than just ours. Teachers don't get paid what they deserve. Nurses don't get paid what they deserve. Many of the people who actually do direct services for other humans are not paid the way specialists are paid. We won't either. It is rare that anyone in the world gets paid what they want to get paid - we always want more and more, but this will not change until other societal situations also change. We can work on it bit by bit, but don't expect to see much rapid progress. It takes time.

Now, there are folks out there who are protesting that they cannot find a position that pays above minimum wage. $7.25 an hour is not enough to live on - I understand that. I took a job at minimum wage 26 years ago when I started my career because I needed a job. I stayed at that job for 6 months before I was able to find something that paid more what I thought I needed in order to live in the area I wanted to be in. Neither of those jobs were music therapy jobs, but they did allow me to purchase my first car and insurance, and then move out of my parents' house into a small apartment on my own. Until I was able to find a better job, I lived at home with my parents and my younger brother. I contributed to grocery money and paid for my own health insurance, car insurance, and car stuff. I was able to survive by making sacrifices. I took two part-time jobs to help out with some extra money (neither of those jobs paid minimum wage!). I did what I had to do to survive, and that was not at all what I wanted to be doing, but what I had to do. There was no choice for me - I had to have a job. As I continued to do my work in the jobs that I had, I was able to sneak in some music therapy and demonstrate to people that music therapy had value beyond what I was being paid. When asked why I was leaving, I stated explicitly that I was unable to survive on minimum wage and that I had to be in a position where my education and training were going to be used. I was honest about what I needed, and I left to find something better for me.

I believe that people pay for what is valuable to them. For folks who cannot find a position that will pay above minimum wage, then state definitively that minimum wage is not acceptable, but do not think that you are going to be earning a salary in the high six figures getting out of school. It's not going to happen! I'm currently earning a very good salary, but it's taken me 27 years to get to the point of financial stability and comfortable living. When brand new therapists state that they will not take a salary that is under $50,000, I laugh at them. What makes newbies think that the world values music therapy enough to demand that sort of money??


Let's do a reality check here. Businesses will only pay music therapists what they think they can get away with. Businesses will want to pay all their employees as little as possible so that more of the budget can be used for business profit. That's what makes businesses work. I can certainly try walking into my school district's business office and demand a bigger salary, but that is not the procedure for my district. My salary is part of a negotiation between the teachers' union and the district. If I decide to act outside the way the business operates, then I decide not to be bound by the agreement that is part of my contract. I would be laughed at and ushered out of the office and my position. If a business is trying to hire a music therapist for minimum wage, then that business has probably hired a music therapist for that salary before. If the business is unable to negotiate, then my attitude is that they do not deserve to have a music therapist on staff, but the music therapy applicant has to recognize that there are ranges that businesses have as part of their expectations. If I walk into my school district office and demand a salary that is larger than the career teacher who has been at the district for 35 years, I will be laughed at...by everyone...and be grist for the story mill for ages!

We can be an arrogant group of professionals. We make demands of the world, but we don't always seem to live up to the promise that we make. I have been privy to conversations about music therapists who cannot play a guitar chord without having to stop all interaction to look at finger placements. I hear about people who claim to be music therapists who cannot offer any sort of goal-based intervention ideas. I hear about music therapists who cannot do the job - any part of the job - but who think that they are the best thing to ever happen to another person. 

So, here's what I see as the disconnect. There are lots of folks who have a salary amount in their head that does not correlate with the available positions that are advertised. There are lots of folks who are trying to get music therapists into positions who have particular market boundaries that do not match the salary expectations. We have folks who will not waver on their demands and folks who cannot waver on their expectations. There are employers out there who are desperate for good therapists who have solid music therapy skills who cannot find people to fill those jobs. Their expectations may be high, but do you really think that clients deserve therapists who cannot demonstrate the basic competencies? They do not think that. They think that anyone who is applying for a music therapy position should be able to complete those competencies...

...but, that is an entirely different rant.