Therapist Salary in South Dakota: Counselors, MFTs and Social Workers

All three South Dakota medians sit below their national counterparts, but by margins that differ sharply.

The counselor median of $53,650 is $5,700 below the national $59,350, the social worker median of $48,920 is $11,360 below the national $60,280, and the family therapist median of $44,870 is $22,070 below the national $66,940.

The order of the three occupations reverses as a result.

Nationally, family therapists lead counselors by $7,590 at the median and social workers sit $930 above counselors; in South Dakota, counselors lead social workers by $4,730 and lead family therapists by $8,780.

The national family therapist premium over counselors does not just narrow here — it flips.

Two of the three rows rest on employment estimates the page flags as small samples; the counselor row, estimated at 1,710, carries no flag, and the final section explains the flags.

The counselor row is the only South Dakota distribution this page can quote in full, and its shape is flat: close to the national figures at the bottom, far behind at the top.

The 10th percentile of $39,210 is the only figure on this page above its national counterpart, $270 over the national $38,940.

From there the gap widens moving up: the 25th percentile of $45,650 is 3% below national, the median of $53,650 is 10% below, the 75th percentile of $62,660 is 18% below, and the 90th percentile of $67,010 is 31% below the national $97,590.

The middle half spans $17,010 against a national band of $29,430, and the 10th-to-90th span is $27,800 against $58,650 — less than half.

For someone weighing a counselor offer, the floor looks like the national one, but the ceiling does not.

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

Marriage and family therapists have the lowest of the three South Dakota medians, $44,870, which sits 33% below the national median of $66,940 — the widest gap of the three occupations.

The hourly median is $21.57 against $32.18 nationally.

By median, South Dakota ranks 44th of the 45 jurisdictions that publish one for this occupation.

The employment estimate, 80, is the smallest of the three, so the page flags this row and quotes only its median in prose; read the percentile table below as a small-count table, not as figures to weigh an offer against.

What the median does support: the national premium for family therapists over counselors, $7,590 at the median, is absent here — the South Dakota counselor median of $53,650 sits $8,780 above it.

Mental health and substance abuse social workers have a median of $48,920, 19% below the national $60,280, and an hourly median of $23.52 against $28.98 nationally.

The occupation sits between the other two in South Dakota: $4,730 below the counselor median of $53,650 and $4,050 above the family therapist median of $44,870.

Nationally the order differs — the social worker median sits $930 above the counselor median and $6,660 below the family therapist median.

By median, South Dakota ranks 37th of the 51 jurisdictions that publish one for this occupation.

The employment estimate, 230, is small — smaller than the counselor row's 1,710 — so the row carries the page's flag and the prose quotes only its median; both counts are headcounts of people in jobs, not open positions.

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

A counselor offer at the South Dakota median of $53,650 sits $4,730 above the social worker median and $8,780 above the family therapist median, so the same dollar figure means different things in different rows.

Hourly postings read the same way: the South Dakota hourly medians are $25.79 for counselors, $21.57 for family therapists and $23.52 for mental health and substance abuse social workers, against national hourly medians of $28.53, $32.18 and $28.98.

For the two flagged rows, the median is the only figure this page builds on, so an offer well away from $44,870 or $48,920 has no state benchmark here.

A percentile is a position in the state distribution, not a pay step, so an offer at the 10th percentile says where it sits among South Dakota jobs in that occupation, not a judgement about the person hired.

None of the three rows is a licence figure.

The counselor row pools licensed professional counselors (LPC) and licensed professional counselor–mental health (LPC-MH) with substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors, and BLS publishes no LPC-only or LPC-MH-only median for South Dakota.

The family therapist row is the closest to a single licence: South Dakota licenses marriage and family therapists (LMFT) as an occupation of its own, but OEWS does not split the row by licence stage, so it cannot say what a therapist still working toward the licence earns.

On the social work side, the independent clinical credential is the certified social worker–private independent practice (CSW-PIP), and social workers holding it are counted in this row or in healthcare social work depending on the setting, so the $48,920 median does not describe every CSW-PIP.

Two of the three rows on this page carry the small-sample flag: BLS estimates 80 marriage and family therapists and 230 mental health and substance abuse social workers employed in South Dakota.

BLS still publishes percentiles for both occupations, and the tables print them, but tables built on counts that size can swing widely between percentiles, which is why this page quotes only the median (and the hourly median) for those two rows and builds no analysis on their tails.

The counselor row, estimated at 1,710, is large enough that it carries no flag, and it is the only one of the three distributions this page reads in full.