How much salary are you likely to make as a Psychologist, counselor, MFT, or social worker? Are salaries rising or falling relative to inflation? The following chart shows 13 years of therapist salary data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Note that these figures are adjusted for inflation. All numbers are in 2019 dollars, using the inflation calculator at usinflationcalculator.com. On some mobile devices, you’ll need to turn your device horizontal (landscape) to see the full chart.
It’s important to hold in mind some cautionary notes about this data. The BLS extrapolates full-time salaries from reported hourly wages. In doing so, it includes part-time workers, but may overstate what the average worker actually makes. It also fails to account for underemployment (people working fewer hours in their profession than they would like to). BLS professional categories are not perfect overlays for licensure. The counselor category changed in 2017 to combine mental health and substance abuse counselors into a single category. Finally, the data here reflects national means, and as such may be dragged up a bit by outliers on the high end. Median data shows similar trends to those shown here, with medians generally a few percentage points below means. And of course, since these are national averages, salaries vary by state, city, and workplace.