Therapist Salary in Arkansas: Counselors, MFTs and Social Workers

Arkansas keeps the national order: at the median, marriage and family therapists lead at $64,340, mental health and substance abuse social workers sit between at $58,590, and counselors trail at $51,580 — the same ranking the national medians of $66,940, $60,280 and $59,350 give.

All three fall short of their own national figures, but by very different margins: 13% for counselors, 4% for family therapists and 3% for social workers.

The spacing changes as well.

Family therapists lead counselors by $12,760 in Arkansas against $7,590 nationally, and social workers lead counselors by $7,010 against $930 nationally, so the counselor row drops furthest behind the other two.

Any single Arkansas figure for the whole title would have to hide one of those margins, which is why this page shows all three.

Arkansas counselors sit below their national distribution at every published percentile except the 90th.

The 10th percentile of $35,760 is 8% below the national figure, the 25th percentile of $38,940 is 17% below, the median of $51,580 is 13% below, and the 75th percentile of $67,240 is 12% below the national $76,530 — while the 90th percentile of $100,270 is 3% above the national $97,590, the only above-national point on this page.

The middle half of the Arkansas distribution spans $28,300, close to the national band of $29,430, while the stretch from the median to the 90th percentile runs $48,690 against $38,240 nationally — above the median, the Arkansas distribution is the wider one.

For someone weighing a counselor offer, the Arkansas median is a lower benchmark than the national one, but the Arkansas ceiling is not.

This is a combined occupation, so the figures describe every kind of counselor it pools, not one licence.

Arkansas ranks 46th of the 51 jurisdictions publishing a median, and 34th of the 50 publishing an employment estimate, with 2,570 employed.

Marriage and family therapists hold the highest median of the three Arkansas rows at $64,340 — 4%, or $2,600, below the national median of $66,940.

The hourly median is $30.93 against $32.18 nationally, a gap of $1.25.

By median, Arkansas ranks 21st of the 45 jurisdictions that publish one for the occupation, ahead of either of the state's other two rows.

But this is the row to read with the most caution: BLS estimates only 80 marriage and family therapists employed in Arkansas, tied for 37th of the 40 jurisdictions that publish an employment estimate, and on a count that small the percentile table can swing sharply between releases.

So this page quotes only the row's median, hourly median and employment estimate.

OEWS does not say why the median sits so close to national on so small a count, and this page does not guess.

Mental health and substance abuse social workers in Arkansas sit below the national distribution at every percentile, and by a single-digit percentage at each one.

The median of $58,590 is $1,690, or 3%, below the national $60,280, and the floor is closest: the 10th percentile of $39,440 is just $300 below the national figure.

The gap widens through the middle — the 25th percentile of $42,620 is 9% below the national $47,070 and the 75th percentile of $73,290 is 8% below the national $79,730 — then narrows to 5% at the 90th percentile of $99,070.

The middle half spans $30,670 against a national band of $32,660.

Arkansas ranks 23rd of the 51 jurisdictions that publish a median for this occupation; with an estimated 1,040 employed, it ranks 32nd of the 50 that publish an employment estimate.

Start with the occupation the job would be counted in, and compare against that row rather than a blended number.

An offer at the counselor median of $51,580 would sit $7,010 below the social worker median of $58,590 and $12,760 below the family therapist median of $64,340.

Hourly postings read the same way: the Arkansas hourly medians are $24.80 for counselors, $28.17 for social workers and $30.93 for family therapists.

The social worker hourly median sits $0.81 below its national counterpart and the family therapist one $1.25 below, against $3.73 for counselors — the largest hourly gap on the page in both dollars and percent.

A percentile is a position in the state distribution, not a pay step, so an offer at the 25th percentile says where it sits among Arkansas jobs in that occupation, not a judgement about the person hired.

None of the three rows is a licence figure.

The counselor row pools LPCs and Licensed Associate Counselors (LACs) with substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors, and BLS publishes no LPC-only median for Arkansas.

The family therapist row is the closest to a single licence, an occupation of its own for marriage and family therapists, whom Arkansas licenses as the LMFT with the LAMFT tier below it — but OEWS does not split it by licence stage, so it cannot say what an LAMFT earns.

In social work, Arkansas licenses the LSW, the LMSW and the LCSW, the certified tier, and clinical social workers holding the LCSW are counted either in this social worker row or in healthcare social work, depending on the setting, so the $58,590 median does not describe every LCSW.

Counselors and marriage and family therapists share one regulator, the Arkansas Board of Examiners in Counseling; the licensure pages linked below own the requirements for each title.

The family therapist row carries the page's small-sample flag: BLS estimates 80 marriage and family therapists employed in Arkansas, a fraction of the 2,570 counselors and 1,040 mental health and substance abuse social workers in the other two rows.

On an employment estimate that small, a percentile table can shift sharply from one release to the next, so the page quotes only this row's median, hourly median and employment estimate — no 10th, 25th, 75th or 90th percentile.

The Arkansas family therapist median of $64,340 is the highest median on the page, and it should be read with that uncertainty attached rather than as a settled benchmark.