Licensure Compacts for Employers: Counseling Compact, PSYPACT, Social Work, NLC and IMLC

Six separate agreements cover the licenses below, and the fastest mistake is treating a compact that has passed as a compact your clinicians can use.

The Counseling Compact shows the gap: the commission's member list names 40 jurisdictions — 39 states plus the District of Columbia — yet as of October 1, 2026, only 10 states issue and accept compact privileges.

Enactment belongs to the legislature; whether a compact is actually issuing a credential, and when, is the commission's timetable.

Read the table by the dates.

Every count below was checked in September or October 2026, these maps move during the year, and the verification step on the right is what your credentialing file should hold — re-check the status with the named commission when you credential, not just at the offer stage.

Two rows carry the staffing decisions.

Among the behavioral health licenses — counseling, psychology, social work — only two compacts are issuing a multistate credential as of October 2026: the Counseling Compact's privilege and PSYPACT's APIT.

The nursing rows are the common mix-up: the NLC's multistate license covers registered nurses and licensed practical nurses and gives a nurse practitioner no multistate APRN authority, so the psychiatric nurse practitioner row has no working compact as of September 2026.

Licensure is one layer of hiring across state lines, and the rest of the process — requisition, screening, payer credentialing, pay — is the same discipline either way.

The behavioral health hiring hub walks the employer side end to end; this page stays on the compact question.

The Counseling Compact covers professional counselors, and its status has two layers.

Pennsylvania enacted the compact on July 12, 2026, with the law taking effect 60 days later.

But enactment is not live: as of October 1, 2026, only 10 states issue and accept privileges — Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, Louisiana, Minnesota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee and Wyoming.

Oklahoma became the tenth that day.

Another 29 states plus the District of Columbia are still completing the steps the commission requires before they can issue and receive privileges, so a counselor in a state that has only enacted the compact still has no privilege available.

Staff against the live list, re-checked at credentialing time — not against the member count.

The credential is a privilege, not a license, and three mechanics decide whether your hire can hold one.

The counselor participates through their home state — the state where they primarily reside — and needs that home-state license to take part; a counselor living in a non-member state cannot use the compact at all, and their only route into another state is that state's own license.

Eligibility runs to licensed professional counselors who hold an unencumbered license to independently diagnose, assess, treat and practice at the highest level their state offers, and the commission says a counselor licensed as an LMFT or LCSW typically is not eligible — so the compact is typically no help for your marriage and family therapist or social work hires.

And each counselor applies for a privilege in each remote state where you need them: their own state passing the compact does not automatically approve their license for use anywhere else.

One rule catches employers out: the application is the counselor's, not yours.

The commission states that employers, third-party affiliates or other representatives may not legally complete or submit the privilege application on a licensee's behalf.

Your work sits on both sides of that step.

Before you promise a start date, confirm the counselor's home state, license level and eligibility.

After the application, verify the granted privilege yourself on the commission's CompactConnect public search — the commission does not issue paper certificates, so the search is the verification.

The cost is a $30 commission administrative fee per privilege plus the remote state's own fee, which each state sets.

The commission's own advice to counselors is to check with their employer, online platform and insurance company before applying for a privilege, to make sure it is usable under their policies — which makes your insurer a stop in your process, not an afterthought.

Advertising is a final limit: the compact does not regulate it, so a privilege holder follows each state's advertising law wherever they see clients.

The license titles that qualify, the per-state fee totals and the application walkthrough are clinician-side questions, and they live in our guide to the Counseling Compact.

PSYPACT is the compact for psychologists.

Per the PSYPACT Commission's map as of September 2026, it counts 46 enacted and 44 effective jurisdictions, and among the 50 states plus DC that means 42 states plus DC are effective.

Alaska is the newest: HB 110 was enacted June 22, 2026, and PSYPACT took effect there on September 20, 2026.

Two enacted states are not open for practice yet — Iowa takes effect July 1, 2027 and Louisiana on January 1, 2028 — so read the commission's map when you credential rather than working from an older list.

What you verify depends on where the work happens.

Telepsychology under PSYPACT runs on an APIT: the psychologist must be licensed in, and physically present in, a PSYPACT home state when delivering the service, and that home state must participate in PSYPACT.

Read that from the employer's chair.

A psychologist working from a participating home state can hold a telehealth caseload across PSYPACT states under the compact; a psychologist whose home state sits outside PSYPACT has no compact route at all, whichever states your clients are in.

Ask for the APIT the way you ask for a license number, and file it with the credential.

In-person work is the smaller door.

PSYPACT's Temporary Authorization to Practice, the in-person route, is capped at 30 total calendar days per year, is available only in states that participate in PSYPACT, and requires the psychologist's home state to participate too.

For a clinician who runs assessments, intakes or intensive in-person programs in another state, 30 days a year is a planning constraint — ongoing in-person practice needs the remote state's own license.

The application steps and fees on the psychologist's side are in our clinician guide to PSYPACT.

The Social Work Licensure Compact is law but not yet a pathway.

It came into effect when Kansas became the seventh state to enact it, on April 12, 2024.

As of October 7, 2026, the commission's jurisdictions page lists 33 states as having passed the compact language — 32 the month before, with West Virginia newly on the list — and a July 2026 news post counts 35 states as having passed compact legislation.

None of that produces a credential a practice can use: as of October 7, 2026, the compact is activated, no multistate licenses are being issued, and the commission says implementation will take 12 to 24 months before licenses can be issued.

It names no start date.

Until issuing begins, a social work hire needs a license from each state where clients sit.

Write that into the staffing plan now so no one budgets for a multistate social work credential that does not exist yet — and re-check the commission as the 12-to-24-month implementation process runs.

We keep the current status and the eligibility questions on the Social Work Compact page.

Behavioral health employers hire two nursing licenses, and only one has a working compact.

The Nurse Licensure Compact issues a multistate license to registered nurses and licensed practical nurses, and it counts 43 member jurisdictions as of October 7, 2026.

Read the commission's map with its own footnote, though: on the August 2026 map, Guam, Massachusetts and the U.S. Virgin Islands have enacted the NLC but are not fully implemented — nurses in those three cannot yet apply for a compact license, and Massachusetts does not yet let nurses holding multistate licenses practice in the state.

A multistate RN license travels across the implemented member states, not to every name on the map.

The psychiatric nurse practitioner is the row to catch.

The NLC gives a nurse practitioner no multistate APRN authority, and the separate APRN Compact comes into limited effect only once 7 states enact it.

As of September 2026 that threshold had not been reached, so no APRN could hold a multistate APRN license when this was written.

Until that changes, a psychiatric nurse practitioner's authority to practice lives in each state's own APRN license: check the board in every state where clients will sit, and re-check the APRN Compact Commission before building a staffing plan that assumes the compact has moved.

For psychiatrists, the Interstate Medical Licensure Compact is an expedited pathway to licensure — not a multistate license.

The physician still receives a separate license from each state.

As of September 30, 2026, the IMLC has 44 member states plus DC and Guam; 38 states, DC and Guam act as a State of Principal License, where the application starts; Hawaii and Vermont issue licenses only; and Alaska, Arkansas, New Mexico and Rhode Island have passed the compact but are still implementing it.

New York has legislation introduced only.

The scale behind it is real: as of September 30, 2026, the commission counts 142,363 letters of qualification and 240,184 licenses issued since launch.

What the IMLC changes for your credentialing file is speed, not the destination — when the psychiatrist finishes, you verify a license from each state where they will see patients, exactly as you would for any physician hire.

The IMLC compresses the physician's paperwork; it does not shrink your verification list.