Clinical Director Salary: What the $123,860 Covers

The closest federal number to a clinical director salary is a median of $123,860 a year — and the honesty starts with what that number is not.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes no occupation called clinical director.

What it publishes is SOC 11-9111, medical and health services managers: a $123,860 median in the May 2025 release, on a distribution running from $73,390 at the 10th percentile to $224,340 at the 90th, across 597,080 jobs in every industry the survey covers.

Every figure on this page describes that occupation.

It is the nearest published series to the role — management of health services — and it is used here as a named proxy, not as a count of clinical directors.

How wide matters more here than anywhere else on the site.

The counselor occupation pools three job families; this occupation pools an entire layer of healthcare — medical and health services managers in every industry the survey covers, most of it far from behavioral health.

The behavioral-health slice the release breaks out is small: exactly three industries, 24,920 jobs between them, against 597,080 for the occupation as a whole.

So the direction of fit runs one way: a clinical director may well be counted somewhere in this table, but clinical directors are nowhere near most of what the table counts.

Those three cells are the most behavioral-health-specific view the release offers, and they tell a consistent story.

Outpatient mental health and substance abuse centers (NAICS 621420) employ 11,210 people in the occupation at a median of $97,030; offices of mental health practitioners other than physicians (NAICS 621330) employ 7,460 at $98,260; residential mental health and substance abuse facilities (NAICS 623220) employ 6,250 at $95,690.

Every one of those medians sits at least $25,600 below the occupation-wide $123,860, and the 25th percentiles run from $74,990 to $80,200 against $94,700 nationally — in the settings where behavioral-health management actually happens, the release places the occupation's pay in its lower half.

One boundary keeps the reading honest: the 90th percentile in outpatient centers is $218,970, within $5,370 of the national 90th, so the top of that range nearly matches the occupation-wide 90th percentile even as the middle sits far below.

OEWS measures wages and employment, not causes — it cannot say why the cells sit low, and this page does not guess.

The number also cannot see what the title is, because the rules that name the post define it differently at every level of government.

The federal rule that uses it — the Medicare conditions of participation for psychiatric hospitals, 42 CFR 482.62(b) — requires the clinical director to meet the training-and-experience requirements for examination by the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology or its osteopathic equivalent: a physician psychiatrist, an occupation whose median in the same release is $281,870, on the psychiatrist salary page.

The federal programs that look closest define different posts entirely: opioid treatment programs (42 CFR Part 8) name a program sponsor and a physician medical director, the federal CCBHC certification criteria name a project director and a psychiatrist medical director with a prescriber fallback — and neither names a clinical director.

State program-licensing rules, where they reach the post at all, split again: Louisiana requires a licensed clinical director from a listed set of licences plus two years' experience (LAC 48:I §5683(B)); Florida defines its clinical director as a clinical supervisor who must be a "qualified professional" — a definition broad enough to include a certified person with a bachelor's degree (Fla.

Admin.

Code 65D-30.002(16), the substance-abuse licensing chapter; the qualified-professional definition at Fla.

Stat. §397.311); Pennsylvania sets degree-and-experience requirements for program directors with no licence at all, pairing every eight counselors with a required full-time clinical supervisor (28 Pa.

Code §§704.5, 704.6); Minnesota's treatment director rules likewise require no licence (Minn.

Stat.

245G.10–245G.11); Kentucky and Oregon regulate the clinical supervisor instead, each anchored to 4,000 hours of field experience (908 KAR 1:370; OAR 309-018-0125).

Six states read, deliberately mixed — none of it supports a 50-state claim about who may hold the title.

So the same title can be a psychiatrist's post in one rule and a bachelor's-certified supervisor's in another, depending on which regulator is naming it — and the wage table has no licence field to show the difference.

The percentiles are not a ladder, either: they are positions in one population's distribution, so the $94,700 25th percentile is not an entry-level clinical director salary and the $224,340 90th is not a promotion target.

Coverage matters more for this role than for the clinicians it manages: OEWS counts wage and salary workers and, in BLS's words, "does not include the self-employed, owners and partners in unincorporated firms" — a clinician who owns or partners in the practice they direct is outside the series entirely.

And because no federal series measures the title, a "clinical director salary" quoted to the dollar by a job board or aggregator is a self-reported sample of blurred titles, not a measurement of any occupation.

This page does not estimate the gap the release leaves.

A plausible band is not evidence.

Set the table in the field's ladder and the role's operational authority is legible — phrased as positions, not causes, because the release measures pay, not jobs.

Above the manager median sit the physicians and little else: psychiatrists at $281,870, $158,010 higher, and the all-specialties nurse practitioner series at $132,300, $8,440 higher (all nurse practitioners, not psychiatric ones).

Below it sit the clinicians the role supervises: clinical and counseling psychologists at $100,580 — $23,280 below the manager median, itself a combined occupation, covered on the clinical psychologist salary page; marriage and family therapists at $66,940, $56,920 below, at the top of the three licence series behind the therapist title; the combined counselor occupation at $59,350, $64,510 below; and the two social-work tables at $67,880 and $60,280, whose licence-level split is on the LCSW salary page.

Against the all-occupations median of $50,980, the manager median sits $72,880 above the middle of the American labor market.

Geography is the deliberate omission, and it is a bigger one here than anywhere else on the site, because the state data exists: BLS publishes this occupation's median in all 51 jurisdictions in the same release.

Per-state pages will be added here as they are written, from that release and no other.

Until then this page carries no state table and no "highest-paying states" ranking — with the role itself absent from the series, ranking states now would rank every kind of health-services management and label it a clinical-director answer.

To see how employers phrase the seat — which licence they name, what scope they attach, what they actually offer — browse clinical director roles on the job board.

This page is career information, not legal, clinical, or medical advice, and it is not guidance for anyone seeking treatment. Wage figures are BLS OEWS May 2025; the rules that name or restrict the clinical director post are set by federal regulators (CMS conditions of participation, SAMHSA program criteria) and by each state's program-licensing body, and all of it changes — confirm the current position with the body that makes the rule before relying on any of it.