Counselors, All Other

$50,860 against a $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $840 apart. Counselors, All Other pays what the average job pays, so the decision has to be made on the work, the entry cost and the spread rather than on the wage.

At 28,580 employed, this is a mid-sized occupation. In a normal city that means several possible employers and a genuine market rate, which is the point at which knowing the numbers on this page starts to be worth money.

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 Counselors, All Other — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.

From $43,680 to $66,520 is $1,903 a month, or 1.5x 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 25th percentile of $43,680 is only $6,340 off the $50,020 national midpoint. Being in the worst-paid quarter of Counselors, All Other still means being paid close to what the average American job pays.

Avoid it if you take work home emotionally. The caseloads are above what the funding supports and that is structural, not local.

There is no failure rate on this page because there is nothing honest to divide by. BLS counted 28,580 people employed as Counselors, All Other; it did not count the people who trained for it and are doing something else, and a rate built without that denominator would be a number we made up.

1.5x between $43,680 and $66,520 is the ordinary shape of an occupation where experience and region both matter and neither dominates. $50,860 is a fair expectation by mid-career, not on day one.

Put in money rather than ratios: $43,680 at the 25th percentile, $50,860 at the midpoint, $66,520 at the 75th. $22,840 separates the quarter of Counselors, All Other at the bottom from the quarter at the top.

Getting to $66,520, the 75th percentile, is worth $15,660 a year more than the $50,860 midpoint and $22,840 more than the $43,680 a quarter of Counselors, All Other settle for.

The upper half of the middle range — $50,860 to $66,520, or $15,660 — is far longer than the lower half at $7,180. In a shape like this an average would flatter Counselors, All Other considerably, and would describe nobody.

Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $24.45 at the midpoint for Counselors, All Other, $21.00 at the 25th percentile and $31.98 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.