LCSW Salary: Two Occupations, Two Different Numbers
Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 release (retrieved via O*NET, August 2026).
Figures are national annual wages for the two SOC occupations that clinical social workers are counted in — there is no BLS occupation called "LCSW".
The two occupations an LCSW is counted in
Clinical social workers are split across two separate BLS occupations, surveyed and published independently for May 2025.
Which one your job lands in depends on the setting, not on your licence:
Healthcare social workers
SOC 21-1022 · median $67,880 · hospitals, integrated primary care, medical teams
$56,710–$82,240
Mental health & substance abuse social workers
SOC 21-1023 · median $60,280 · community mental health, SUD treatment, outpatient BH
$47,070–$79,730
What Affects Licensed Clinical Social Worker Salary?
The gap between those two medians is about $7,600, and nothing about the clinician explains it.
Same licence, same MSW, same ASWB Clinical exam — the difference is which building the work happens in.
A clinical social worker doing therapy on a hospital behavioural health unit is counted as a healthcare social worker; one doing therapy at a community mental health centre is counted in the mental health and substance abuse category.
That makes "what does an LCSW earn?" a question about setting first.
It is worth knowing before you accept your first post-licensure role, because the two settings recruit differently and the pay difference compounds over a career.
It is also why an LCSW salary figure quoted without its source occupation is close to meaningless — and why any single national number for the wider therapist title is a blend of even more datasets, as set out in why there is no single national median.
The larger variable is licensure status.
Pre-clinical social workers — LMSW, LSW, or whatever your state calls the tier — earn materially less than the figures above, and the mechanism is not a judgement about skill.
Most payers will not credential a clinician who cannot practise independently, so the work bills under a supervisor who holds the contract and carries the compliance exposure, and the gap funds supervision, overhead and that risk.
The full explanation is in can an associate bill insurance?
After setting and licensure comes the ordinary stuff: geography, employer type, whether the role carries supervisory duties, and whether you are salaried or paid per session held.
On the last one, note that a fee-for-service schedule that looks full on paper does not pay if clients do not attend.
One thing this page does not show is a state-by-state table.
Those figures exist in the same OEWS release but have to be pulled one state and one occupation at a time, and publishing estimates in the meantime would defeat the purpose of a page about not trusting unsourced numbers.
They will be added when they are sourced.
For the licence itself — the ladder, the settings, and why employers so often ask for the LCSW specifically — see what is an LCSW?
What Licensed Clinical Social Worker Job Listings Show Right Now
From the 531 active licensed clinical social worker listings on BehavioralHires as of October 29, 2026.
Employers with the most openings
Where the openings are
Pay employers post
- 13% of licensed clinical social worker listings state any pay at all.
Benefits and work arrangement
- 3% remote or telehealth and 25% hybrid; the rest are on-site
- 401k Matchnamed in 79%
- Health Insurancenamed in 75%
- Dental & Visionnamed in 73%
- Continuing Education Budgetnamed in 53%
- PTO / Paid Time Offnamed in 52%
Source: active licensed clinical social worker listings on BehavioralHires, updated daily. Pay figures use only listings that state pay (midpoint of each posted range). Benefits count listings that name the benefit; a listing that doesn’t mention one may still offer it.
Browse 531 jobs →