Occupation / job
Child, Family, and School Social Workers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
Child, Family, and School Social Workers pays $59,550 against $50,020 across all occupations — $794 a month more. Every premium is paid for something: find out whether it is the schooling, the licence, the hours or the risk before you decide you want it.
392,550 people work as Child, Family, and School Social Workers — large enough that the occupation is always hiring somewhere and always losing people somewhere else. Constant demand is security; it is rarely leverage.
Counselling and social work suit people who can hold a caseload of problems they cannot fix and still come back on Monday. Emotional stamina is the binding constraint, not credentials.
We carry no verified training length for Child, Family, and School Social Workers — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
From $48,270 to $76,070 is $2,316 a month, or 1.6x bottom quarter to top. An ordinary spread like this is mostly years and geography; assume you enter near the bottom of it and that closing the gap takes a career rather than a move.
The bottom quarter of Child, Family, and School Social Workers earns under $48,270, which is within $1,750 of the $50,020 typical American job. An occupation whose 25th percentile is level with the national middle has an unusually forgiving downside.
Avoid it if you take work home emotionally. The caseloads are above what the funding supports and that is structural, not local.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 392,550 figure counts people already working as Child, Family, and School Social Workers, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
1.6x between $48,270 and $76,070 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $59,550 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.
In cash terms the middle half of Child, Family, and School Social Workers runs $48,270 to $76,070 — $27,800 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $59,550.
The 75th percentile is $76,070. Reaching it from the $59,550 midpoint is $16,520 a year; reaching it from the $48,270 that the bottom quarter of Child, Family, and School Social Workers earn is $27,800.
$16,520 separates $59,550 from the $76,070 top quarter, while only $11,280 separates it from $48,270. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Child, Family, and School Social Workers has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Child, Family, and School Social Workers is $28.62 an hour. The quarters sit at $23.20 and $36.57, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Child, Family, and School Social Workers for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $59,550 describes them.
The hourly number on this page is $59,550 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Child, Family, and School Social Workers, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else