{"id":407,"date":"2011-01-23T12:51:39","date_gmt":"2011-01-23T19:51:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/?p=407"},"modified":"2011-01-24T11:53:26","modified_gmt":"2011-01-24T18:53:26","slug":"how-many-california-massage-providers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/2011\/01\/23\/how-many-california-massage-providers\/","title":{"rendered":"How Many California Massage Providers?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>California does not require state licensing to practice massage therapy, but instead offers, via the California Massage Therapy Council (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.camtc.org\/\" rel=\"external\">CAMTC<\/a>), a state-law authorized, voluntary certification that exempts the holders from local licensing laws. In return, certificants undergo education verification and extensive background checks. Because of this voluntary regulatory structure, there&#8217;s no centralized means of reliably estimating the number of massage providers in California. Recent estimates range between 30,000 to 100,000.<\/p>\n<p>What we can do, however, is check the consistency of such estimates with other statistics. The 5 year business survival rate for massage providers is estimated to be between about 30% to 40% (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/articles\/massage_training_trends.pdf\" rel=\"external\">Grant and Forman<\/a>, p. 20). This compares with general small business survival rates of 42% to 51% from data given by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ces.census.gov\/index.php\/ces\/cespapers?down_key=101614\" rel=\"external\">Headd (2000)<\/a>. Factors differentiating the massage therapy survival rates from general small business rates can include: entering massage practice without being fully prepared to run a business, physical demands, emotional\/interpersonal demands, and need to provide health care for self and family (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.businessweek.com\/smallbiz\/content\/apr2008\/sb20080430_430663.htm\" rel=\"external\">a concern of entrepreneurs in general<\/a>).<\/p>\n<p>We can take five-year survival rates of a cohort entering to profession to be the 5th power of yearly survival rates. Thus 30%, 35%, and 40% five-year rates correspond to yearly survival rates of 78.6%, 81.1%, and 83.3%, respectively. The corresponding yearly loss rates are 21.4%, 18.9%, and 16.7%. Also, the respective two-year retention rates would be, 61.8%, 65.8%, and 69.4%, which might constitute a range of expected renewal rates for two-year provider certification.<\/p>\n<p>If we assume a balance between annual graduation rates (G) of massage students and yearly loss from the profession (i.e., an equilibrium assumption), then we get that the number of providers in practice is:<\/p>\n<p class=\"indent\">N<sub>MT<\/sub> = G \/ L&nbsp;,<\/p>\n<p>where L is the annual loss rate expressed as a fraction. The loss rates above give (1\/L) factors of 4.7, 5.3, and 6.0, respectively. Note also that G could include multiple sources of those entering practice in California, including net migration from other states.<\/p>\n<p>At the 18 January CAMTC meeting, an estimate of annual graduates of 7000-8000 was informally stated. When I multiply 7500 by 5.3, I get an estimate of about 40,000 providers. The range in number of providers from the above is 33,000 (4.7&#215;7000) to 48,000 (6.0&#215;8000).<\/p>\n<p>While nothing guarantees the truth or accuracy of the above, when we look at number of providers, graduation rates, and five-year business survival rates as being connected rather than just as separate numbers, we gain some insights we otherwise would miss. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>California does not require state licensing to practice massage therapy, but instead offers, via the California Massage Therapy Council (CAMTC), a state-law authorized, voluntary certification that exempts the holders from local licensing laws. In return, certificants undergo education verification and extensive background checks. Because of this voluntary regulatory structure, there&#8217;s no centralized means of reliably [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,109],"tags":[111,110],"class_list":["post-407","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-business","category-massage-therapy","tag-retention-rate","tag-turnover-rate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407"}],"version-history":[{"count":24,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":431,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407\/revisions\/431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ramblemuse.com\/rmtp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}