SOC 21-1023 · 21-0000 · Score reference month September 2026
Assess and treat individuals with mental, emotional, or substance abuse problems, including abuse of alcohol, tobacco, and/or other drugs. Activities may include individual and group therapy, crisis intervention, case management, client advocacy, prevention, and education.
The national Job Market Health score is in the Balanced band for September 2026.
Job Market Health score
Stable · -1
Job Market Health scores are derived indicators based on published data, informational only, not a forecast or guarantee.
Latest interpretation
The clearest signals from the latest validated score, outlook and metro data.
Long-term outlook scores 80/100, compared with 40/100 for current demand, a 40-point difference.
JobMarketHealth score componentsBLS projects 12,500 average annual openings and +10.3% employment growth from 2025 to 2035. Projected openings are a modeled annual average, not vacancies open today.
BLS Employment ProjectionsNew York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ has the largest published metro employment count for mental health and substance abuse social workers, at 12,090 jobs. The next-largest published metro is Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA with 9,380 jobs. This measures employment scale, not market quality.
BLS OEWSQCEW industry conditions for this occupation’s employment mix
Choose a state to see how the industries that employ this occupation are performing locally.
Choose a state above to explore its available industry context.
QCEW measures employment and wages by industry, not by occupation. We weight those industry conditions using the published industry mix for this occupation. These figures describe the industries that employ this occupation; they are not direct counts of people working in the occupation or jobs currently open.
Source: BLS QCEW. This section is not part of the national 0 to 100 Job Market Health score. See the methodology.
Compare states for mental health and substance abuse social workersSide-by-side published industry conditions for two or three states. There is no state-level health score; the 0 to 100 score is national.
The score is a national composite from 0 to 100 that weights near term hiring demand at 50 percent, the occupation's own employment fundamentals at 30 percent, and long-term outlook at 20 percent. Wages and occupation profile details are context shown alongside it, not score inputs. See the full methodology.
Median annual wage and metro employment come from BLS OEWS, which is annual. Projected annual openings and projected growth come from BLS Employment Projections and describe the published projection horizon, so they are not a count of jobs open today. Values shown as not published are suppressed by the source rather than filled in here.
Published composite score · 0–100 · by reference month
| Reference month | Score / 100 |
|---|---|
| Jan 25 | 73 |
| Feb 25 | 72 |
| Mar 25 | 71 |
| Apr 25 | 70 |
| May 25 | 71 |
| Jun 25 | 70 |
| Jul 25 | 68 |
| Aug 25 | 66 |
| Sep 25 | 65 |
| Oct 25 | 62 |
| Nov 25 | 62 |
| Dec 25 | 59 |
| Jan 26 | 63 |
| Feb 26 | 59 |
| Mar 26 | 60 |
| Apr 26 | 59 |
| May 26 | 61 |
| Jun 26 | 61 |
| Jul 26 | 60 |
| Aug 26 | 58 |
| Sep 26 | 57 |
The three published inputs behind the composite · each 0–100
OEWS employment count, where the jobs are, not a quality ranking
OEWS May 2025. These occupation counts describe the survey reference period.
Linked metro names open overall job-market profiles.
| Metro area | Employment | Jobs per 1,000 | Median annual wage |
|---|---|---|---|
| New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ | 12,090 | 1.27 | $82,450 |
| Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA | 9,380 | 1.50 | $78,410 |
| Boston-Cambridge-Newton, MA-NH | 4,660 | 1.72 | $63,830 |
| Phoenix-Mesa-Chandler, AZ | 2,870 | 1.21 | $46,340 |
| Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX | 2,720 | 0.67 | $47,390 |
| Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI | 2,500 | 1.28 | $75,020 |
| Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN | 2,450 | 0.54 | $57,720 |
| Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV | 2,180 | 0.69 | $78,210 |
| Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD | 2,140 | 0.74 | $54,510 |
| San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA | 1,990 | 0.84 | $87,550 |
Typical entry requirements · BLS Employment Projections 2025-2035
Occupation profile · O*NET 31.0 Database
Also known as: Case Manager, Clinical Social Worker, Clinical Therapist, Clinician, Counselor, Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW)
AI & this occupation
Across 4 research exposure measures, Mental health and substance abuse social workers is in the middle technical AI exposure band based on the mean of the available source-specific percentile ranks. Exposure describes how much of the work the studied AI capabilities could technically assist with; it is not a forecast of job loss.
The saved Anthropic task-exposure benchmark records a zero index for this occupation. This is not proof of no AI use; the observation window is not recorded in this saved release.
In the task mix derived from the March 27, 2025 Anthropic release, 88.4% followed augmentation patterns (people iterating, validating or learning with AI), based on 3 matched tasks.
JobMarketHealth has not measured an AI effect on this occupation's employment or wages, and these figures do not enter its scores; there is no clear evidence of displacement in the data shown here.
As published by the OECD: the gap between what the occupation demands (0-5) and current AI capability in each domain. A lower gap means AI is closer to the requirement (higher potential exposure); 0 means AI already meets it or the domain is not relevant.
From the Census 2025-26 BTOS AI Supplement (all industries; businesses whose employees used generative AI). Census did not measure Mental health and substance abuse social workers specifically.
Exposure and observed usage are separate measures and neither equals job loss. Census BTOS figures are business-level surveys and are not occupation-specific. Sources: GPTs are GPTs occupation exposure; Microsoft Working with AI: AI applicability; AI Occupational Exposure (AIOE); OECD AI Exposure Measure (AI Capability Gap); Anthropic Economic Index; Census BTOS Core AI Use; Census BTOS AI Supplement 2025-26. These figures do not affect Job Market Health scores. Explore AI & Jobs · How we use AI data.
The datasets behind the figures on this page
Values marked “Not published” are suppressed or not published by the source. We leave them blank rather than estimating them. Pipeline status for every source is on Data Status.
O*NET® lists these occupations as related. Each link opens the same published view of score, wages and outlook.
JobMarketHealth derived indicator; not a government statistic. The composite score is national and occupation level.
MethodologyBLS JOLTSBLS CESBLS Employment ProjectionsHow to citeNational Job Market Health release, August 2026
Learn how to judge a market from these numbers in how to tell if a job market is healthy, or why projected growth and annual openings often disagree in projected growth vs projected annual openings. Coverage, revisions and limits are explained on about the data.
The datasets behind these figures, and what each one can and cannot show, are set out on data sources.