Credit Counselors 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 ($38,980) to the 90th ($77,920). 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

BLS counted 28,110 Credit Counselors jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Arizona, where the location quotient is 2.13, meaning the occupation holds 2.13 times its national share of local jobs. Texas employs the most people outright, 3,530 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 30.1% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $38,940 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($77,920) is 2.0 times the 10th percentile ($38,980), a gap of $38,940 a year. The mean of $55,890 sitting above the median of $50,480 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $65,820, and Texas the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Credit Counselors stands number 495 by employment and number 514 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Business and Financial Operations Occupations, the group median wage is $78,420 across 32 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 36% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 10,351,430 jobs. In 22 of the 46 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $50,480, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,440 jobs, 5.1% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $48,450 a year, against $71,220 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $50,480 a year is $4,207 a month gross, $1,942 every two weeks, $971 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($45,420) to the 75th ($61,760) is worth $16,340 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $4,207 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $55,528 would sit between the median ($50,480) and the 75th percentile ($61,760), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $45,420, is $5,060 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Business and Financial Operations Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Cost Estimators, Meeting, Convention, and Event Planners, Financial Specialists, All Other, Insurance Underwriters, Fundraisers, Compensation, Benefits, and Job Analysis Specialists. The full directory is on the Careers hub.