Therapist Salary Calculator

1. Pick the occupation that matches your licence: counselor, marriage and family therapist, or clinical or counseling psychologist. Then choose annual or hourly pay.
2. Enter your base pay, your hours per week and your weeks per year. Add other annual pay or a second offer if you have them.
3. Read your annual gross pay, the pay-period amounts and where your hourly pay sits in the BLS wage table.

What each result tells you:

The first preset is an example, not a typical wage. It shows a counselor on a $58,000 salary at 40 hours a week. That is $27.88 an hour, about the 47th percentile for counselors.

A therapist salary is the gross pay a mental health therapist earns in a year, before tax and deductions. "Therapist" is a job title, not a BLS occupation, so the answer depends on which licensed occupation the therapist belongs to.

This page uses the three BLS occupations that match talk therapy most closely.

These facts come from the BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, read on 2026-10-02. BLS gives the average growth for all occupations as 3%.

Two groups are outside this page. Clinical social workers are counted with social workers, which the social worker calculator linked below covers. Occupational, physical and other rehabilitation therapists have their own BLS codes.

The BLS wage survey covers employees only. A therapist who owns a private practice is self-employed and is not in these wage figures.

The calculator converts your pay between time periods, then places your hourly pay in the BLS wage distribution for therapists.

1. Convert. An hourly rate is multiplied by hours and weeks. A salary is divided by them to get pay per hour.
2. Add other pay. Overtime, differentials and bonuses you typed are added to the annual total only.
3. Find the band. Your base hourly pay is checked against the 10th, 25th, 50th, 75th and 90th percentile wages.
4. Interpolate. W1 and W2 are the two BLS wages around your pay. P1 and P2 are their percentiles.
5. Measure the gap. Your hourly pay minus the median, then divided by the median.

The table below is the counselor wage table the tool loads first. Switch the occupation to load the marriage and family therapist or psychologist table.

Source: BLS OEWS, national estimates, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

BLS annual wages equal the hourly wage times 2,080 hours. That is 40 hours for 52 weeks. The comparison uses hourly pay so that part-time and long-shift schedules are judged fairly.

A licensed marriage and family therapist works for a group practice. The practice pays $40.00 for each paid hour. He averages 28 paid hours a week for 48 weeks. Another practice offers $44.00 an hour.

His hourly rate is well above the national median for marriage and family therapists. His annual pay of $53,760.00 is below the annual median of $66,940, because he is paid for 1,344 hours and BLS annual wages assume 2,080. More paid hours, not a higher rate, would close that gap.

Occupation and Licence

The licensed occupation moves pay more than any other factor in the BLS data. The median annual wage is $59,350 for counselors, $66,940 for marriage and family therapists and $100,580 for clinical and counseling psychologists.

Paid Hours

Part-time work is common in all three occupations, BLS notes. A therapist paid only for client hours has far fewer than 2,080 paid hours a year. Enter paid hours, and compare by the hourly row.

Industry

Insurance carriers pay counselors the highest mean wage. The largest employers of counselors, such as outpatient centers and family services, are not in the top five.

The five industries with the highest annual mean wage for substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors. Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

State

Alaska has the highest annual mean wage for counselors at $86,500.

The five states with the highest annual mean wage for substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors. Source: BLS OEWS, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

For marriage and family therapists the top state is Hawaii at $127,570. BLS gives that estimate a relative standard error of 25.9%, so it is imprecise. For clinical and counseling psychologists the top state is Washington at $137,530.

Self-Employment

BLS reports that 11% of marriage and family therapists and 23% of psychologists are self-employed. Their income is practice revenue minus costs, not a wage. The self-employment tax calculator covers the extra tax they owe.

A marriage and family therapist at the median earns $7,590 a year more than a counselor at the median. A clinical or counseling psychologist at the median earns $33,640 more than a marriage and family therapist.

Annual wages. Source: BLS OEWS, national estimates, May 2025. Read on 2026-10-02.

The ranges overlap widely. A counselor at the 90th percentile earns $97,590, close to the psychologist median of $100,580. A psychologist at the 10th percentile earns $55,170, less than the counselor median.

Counselors are by far the largest group, with 491,930 wage and salary jobs. The counselor median of $59,350 is above the $50,980 median for all occupations that BLS reports for May 2025.

Checking an Agency or Group Practice Offer

Enter the salary or the hourly rate with the paid hours you expect. The band shows where the offer sits for your occupation.

Comparing Two Offers

Enter one as base pay and the other as the second offer. The tool shows both percentiles and the yearly difference on the same hours.

Planning a Licence or Degree Step

Switch the occupation to see how a rate ranks in another table. A $98,000 salary is about the 48th percentile for clinical and counseling psychologists and above the 90th percentile for counselors.

Budgeting After Tax

The result is gross pay. Read the gross vs net income guide and the tax brackets guide before you plan a budget from it. The salary to hourly calculator converts pay without the BLS comparison.

1. Treating a Session Fee as an Hourly Wage

A client fee, say 150 dollars a session, is revenue for the practice. The therapist wage is what the practice pays per paid hour. Enter the wage.

2. Comparing Private Practice Income with BLS Wages

BLS wage data excludes the self-employed. An owner should compare net income after rent, insurance and unpaid hours, and should expect no exact match.

3. Comparing a Part-Time Year with the BLS Annual Wage

BLS annual wages assume 2,080 hours. A caseload of 1,344 paid hours looks underpaid against them. Compare hourly rates.

4. Picking the Wrong Occupation

A psychologist compared with the counselor table looks far above the median. Choose the code that matches your licence.

5. Expecting a Specialty or Billing Premium

BLS does not publish therapist wages by specialty, client type or billing method. This tool applies no such adjustment.

The conversion is exact arithmetic. The percentile is an estimate, because BLS publishes only five points of the wage distribution.

BLS wages are straight-time gross pay. They exclude overtime pay, shift differentials and nonproduction bonuses. Keep those in the other annual pay field so the comparison stays like for like.

It depends on the licensed occupation. In May 2025 the median annual wage was $59,350 for mental health and substance abuse counselors, $66,940 for marriage and family therapists and $100,580 for clinical and counseling psychologists.

The median hourly wage in May 2025 was $28.53 for counselors, $32.18 for marriage and family therapists and $48.36 for clinical and counseling psychologists.

BLS classifies workers by occupation, and therapist is a job title shared by several occupations. Counselors, marriage and family therapists and psychologists each have a separate code and wage table.

No. The BLS wage survey covers wage and salary employees. Self-employed therapists who own a practice are not in the data, so their income can be higher or lower than these wages.

Marriage and family therapists had a median annual wage of $66,940 in May 2025. The lowest 10 percent earned less than $44,650 and the highest 10 percent earned more than $123,730.

Counselors at the 90th percentile earned $97,590 a year in May 2025. Those at the 75th percentile earned $76,530.

Alaska pays the highest annual mean wage for counselors, $86,500. New Mexico, Oregon, Washington and New Jersey are the next four.

Yes. BLS projects 18 percent growth for counselors and 14 percent for marriage and family therapists from 2025 to 2035. The average for all occupations is 3 percent.

No. BLS counts clinical social workers with social workers, not with counselors. Use the social worker salary calculator for that wage table.

Mental health counselors and marriage and family therapists typically need a master degree. Clinical and counseling psychologists typically need a Ph.D. or Psy.D. degree.

No. The calculation runs in your browser. Nothing is sent to a server. The Save button stores a result only on your own device.

• BLS OEWS Profiles, May 2025 national estimates (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Select 21-1018, 21-1013 or 19-3033. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Marriage and Family Therapists (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook: Psychologists (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Read 2026-10-02.)
• BLS technical notes for the May 2025 OEWS estimates (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Defines the wage: straight-time gross pay, 2,080-hour year. Read 2026-10-02.)