Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors worker at that point in the distribution, so $76,230 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

With 440,380 jobs nationally, Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors make up 0.29% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 63,110 of those jobs, the top three states hold 26.0%, and the deepest concentration sits in Massachusetts (location quotient 1.73, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $47,170 at the 25th percentile, $59,190 at the middle, $76,230 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $59,120, a ratio of 2.5 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors runs from the $79,220 median in Alaska down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (63,110 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors stands number 81 by employment and number 423 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 0% more than its group median, and it supplies 17.1% of the group's 2,569,640 jobs. In 23 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $59,190, 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 23,790 jobs, 5.4% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Houma-Bayou Cane-Thibodaux, LA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $42,280 a year, against $90,940 in Anchorage, AK. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

As a household number, $59,190 a year is $4,932 a month gross, $2,277 every two weeks, $1,138 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,170) to the 75th ($76,230) is worth $29,060 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 $4,932 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 $65,109 would sit between the median ($59,190) and the 75th percentile ($76,230), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,170, is $12,020 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Social Workers, All Other, Community Health Workers, Clergy, Counselors, All Other, Directors, Religious Activities and Education, Religious Workers, All Other. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.