The Expected Salary for a Psychologist

If you work as a psychologist in the United States, you can expect to earn somewhere in the range of $50,000 to $80,000 a year. The exact figure moves around quite a bit depending on your employer and the setting you land in.

Hiring outlooks differ by specialty. Industrial-organizational consultants are projected to see about 26% growth, while the rest of the field sits closer to 14%. The practical takeaway: specialty matters when you're weighing where to put your training.

Getting into a graduate psychology program is tough, and the competition shapes who ends up with the best offers. A doctoral degree in a subfield such as health psychology tends to open the widest door. Someone holding an advanced degree in industrial-organizational psychology should also find strong demand. If you stop at a bachelor's, though, your options stay fairly thin.

Back in 2001, the research office of the American Psychological Association ran a survey of 1,104 doctoral-level respondents. Every one of them was licensed, listed clinical psychology as their main field, and worked directly delivering health and mental well-being services to clients. The results give a reasonable snapshot of what clinical work paid, sorted by years of experience and by type of employer.

So where were these clinicians actually working? Most of them, roughly 65%, were in independent practice: 46% on their own and another 19% as part of a group. About 14% were based in hospitals. Around 3% worked in elementary or secondary schools. The remaining slice, 2% or under in each case, showed up in places like university counseling centers, the criminal justice system, rehabilitation facilities, and other human service settings.

According to Payscale.com, the average income for a clinical psychologist came out to $63,935. Looking at it by experience, the median earnings over an eleven-to-twelve month stretch for licensed doctoral-level clinicians was that same $63,935 figure in 2008.

Pay for clinical therapists in the States keeps shifting based on where you're employed, which is the thread running through all of these numbers.