What Social Work Graduates Earn

Median earnings at 1, 4, and 5 years (College Scorecard)

Nothing on this page is a survey response or a recruiter's claim: the $41,622 year-one median and the $53,349 year-five median for Social Work come from federal earnings records pooled across 640 bachelor's programs. The headline median weights programs by graduates counted (17,357 at year one); the second column is the unweighted median program, printed so the method stays visible.

Earnings in this field climb $11,727 between the first and fifth year, a 28% rise that trails the all-fields pattern (the median field in this dataset pays $45,010 at year one and $65,763 at year five). Early-career growth this shape usually means the first job is a foothold: licensure, a portfolio, or a first promotion does the heavy lifting.

One more cut of the year-one data: Pell recipients in Social Work post a median of $42,081, non-recipients $40,793. That $1,288 gap is the distance between two different student populations studying under one field name, and it narrows or widens by institution, which the program table below hints at.

Inside its own CIP family, Social Work ranks 4 of 5 published bachelor's fields by five-year earnings; the family median at that horizon is $54,309. Its closest sibling is Community Organization and Advocacy at $54,309, above this field's $53,349. Family comparisons strip out the broad field effect and leave the specific program choice exposed.

Ranked across all 182 published fields, Social Work stands number 149 by five-year earnings and number 126 by first-year earnings, and number 102 from the lowest median debt. Those three ranks together are the field's fingerprint: high earn rank with a low debt rank is the combination students are actually shopping for, and this field's spread between them is 47 places.

The debt side of the same degree

What does the median Social Work graduate owe? $21,057, the graduate-weighted median over 363 programs with published debt figures. The ratio that matters is debt to first-year earnings: 51%, or 6.1 months of gross pay at the $41,622 median. At the 2026-27 undergraduate loan rate of 6.52%, the standard decade of repayment is $239 a month with $7,660 of interest on top. Model a different balance in the student loan payoff calculator before you borrow it, and sanity-check the degree in the college major ROI calculator.

Where graduates of this field earn the most

Where a student studies inside this field matters at least as much as the field itself. These five programs post the strongest five-year medians in Social Work among programs with at least 30 graduates in the count, led by San Francisco State University at $81,926, against a national field median of $53,349.

A median is a middle graduate, not a promise: half of San Francisco State University's counted graduates earn less than $81,926. Weigh any program here against its own price using the net price estimator and the degree cost calculator.

Two more facts about the shape of this field: the five highest-paying programs in the table account for only 0.9% of the 31,094 graduates counted at five years, so the top of the table is a thin slice and not the field's center; and the leading program's five-year median of $81,926 sits 54% above the national field median of $53,349. Its median debt, $21,763, runs above the field median of $21,057, which is the trade a student at the top of this table is actually being offered.