Therapist Salary in Washington, DC: Counselors, MFTs and Social Workers

The two Washington, DC medians move in the same direction, at very different scales.

The counselor median of $60,450 sits $1,100 above the national $59,350, while the social worker median of $73,310 sits $13,030 above the national $60,280 — 2% and 22% respectively.

BLS publishes no estimate for Washington, DC for marriage and family therapists, so there is no third row.

The two published occupations also stand further apart here than nationally: the social worker median leads the counselor median by $12,860 in DC, against $930 between the two national medians, a lead of 21% measured against the counselor figure.

The order is the national one; the distance is not.

The counselor row is the one that tracks its national figures closely.

The median of $60,450 is 2% above the national median, and the hourly median of $29.06 against $28.53 is the same 2% gap.

The edges sit higher: the 10th percentile of $43,060 is 11% above the national figure, the 75th of $83,570 is 9% above, and the 90th of $107,980 is 11% above the national $97,590.

Only the 25th percentile falls behind, at $180 below the national $47,100.

The middle half spans $36,650, wider than the national band of $29,430, so the distribution stretches outward from a near-national middle.

BLS estimates 1,260 counselors employed in DC, ranking 48th of the 50 jurisdictions that publish an employment estimate for this occupation, and the median ranks 21st of the 51 that publish a median.

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

Mental health and substance abuse social workers in DC sit above the national distribution at every published percentile, and the premium is largest at the bottom.

The 10th percentile of $57,940 is 46% above the national figure and the 25th of $65,360 is 39% above; the median of $73,310 is 22% above the national $60,280 and ranks 6th of the 51 jurisdictions that publish a median.

Above the median the premium rises again to 31% at the 75th percentile of $104,170 against the national 75th of $79,730 — the same dollar figure the national row reports at its own 90th percentile — before falling to 11% at the 90th, $115,500 against its national counterpart.

The full 10th-to-90th span is $57,560 against a national span of $64,430, narrower because the floor rises rather than the top stretches.

The hourly median is $35.25 against $28.98, and BLS estimates 510 employed in DC, tied for 41st of the 50 jurisdictions that publish an employment estimate for this occupation.

Read an offer against the row for the occupation the job would be counted in, because the two rows sit at different distances from their national figures.

The hourly medians are $29.06 for counselors and $35.25 for mental health and substance abuse social workers, $6.19 apart, and the social worker lead holds at every percentile: $14,880 at the 10th, $18,440 at the 25th, $12,860 at the median, $20,600 at the 75th and $7,520 at the 90th.

The lead is widest at the 75th percentile and narrowest at the 90th, so where a dollar figure stands in one row does not predict where it stands in the other.

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 DC jobs in that occupation, not a judgement about the person hired.

None of the figures on this page is a licence figure.

The counselor row pools DC's Licensed Professional Counselors (LPC) with substance abuse and behavioral disorder counselors, so BLS publishes no median for that licence alone, and neither published row is split by licence stage — the figures cannot say what a counselor at the Licensed Graduate Professional Counselor (LGPC) tier earns.

The social worker row mixes licence levels too: clinical social workers holding the LICSW are counted either in this row or in healthcare social work, depending on the setting, so the $73,310 median does not describe every LICSW, and pay at the LGSW and LISW levels is not visible in it either.

DC does license marriage and family therapists, as licensed marriage and family therapists, but BLS publishes no estimate for the occupation in this state, so no figure on this page describes that licence at all.