Counselors, All Other Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($36,160) to the 90th ($91,420). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

With 33,340 jobs nationally, Counselors, All Other make up 0.02% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 13,320 of those jobs, the top three states hold 53.8%, and the deepest concentration sits in Louisiana (location quotient 4.27, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $55,260 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($91,420) is 2.5 times the 10th percentile ($36,160), a gap of $55,260 a year. The mean of $58,070 sitting above the median of $49,830 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Virginia posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $105,140, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Counselors, All Other stands number 465 by employment and number 524 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Community and Social Service Occupations, the group median wage is $59,190 across 17 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 16% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.3% of the group's 2,569,640 jobs. In 25 of the 43 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $49,830, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 5,190 jobs, 15.6% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 108 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $51,860 a year, against $99,020 in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $4,152 a month before tax, $1,917 biweekly, $958 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($42,760) to the 75th ($66,510) is worth $23,750 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $54,813 would sit between the median ($49,830) and the 75th percentile ($66,510), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $42,760, is $7,070 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Community and Social Service Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors, Social and Human Service Assistants, Child, Family, and School Social Workers, Educational, Guidance, and Career Counselors and Advisors, Healthcare Social Workers, Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers. The full directory is on the Careers hub.