Mental health jobs are projected to grow four times as fast as all jobs

Mental health jobs are projected to grow about four times as fast as the job market over the next decade, and job postings for social workers turned up in June after four years of decline.

Leaders of psychology, counseling and social work associations have watched job postings fall for several years, and many of their career centers have felt it. The longer view looks very different. The government's own projections place mental health among the fastest-growing fields in the country, and the posting data has begun to move in the same direction. This article answers the questions we hear most often from mental health associations about what that means for their career centers.

How fast is the mental health workforce expected to grow?

Much faster than the job market as a whole. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that employment of counselors, marriage and family therapists, clinical and counseling psychologists and mental health social workers will grow by about 16% between 2025 and 2035. Employment across all occupations is projected to grow by 3.5% over the same decade.

Counselors lead the group, with projected growth of 18%. The Bureau attributes that growth to people continuing to seek treatment for addiction and mental health conditions. It expects marriage and family therapists to benefit from the spread of integrated care, in which several specialists treat a patient together, and it expects demand for psychologists to rise in schools, hospitals and mental health centers.

Counselors, therapists, psychologists and mental health social workers are projected to grow about four times as fast as all occupations. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics; analysis by Web Scribble.

Where will the openings come from?

Growth is only part of the demand. Every year, people retire, change careers or leave the field, and their positions have to be filled as well. Counting both new and replacement positions, the Bureau expects about 125,000 openings a year across counselors, therapists, psychologists and the three main kinds of social workers.

Counselors account for about four in ten of those openings, and child, family and school social workers for roughly another quarter. For an association, this means demand is spread across many roles rather than concentrated in one, and the employers filling those roles vary just as widely.

Counselors account for the largest share of the openings projected each year. Openings include positions that open when workers retire or change occupations. Source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics; analysis by Web Scribble.

What happened to job postings over the last four years?

Postings for social workers, case managers and similar community roles rose sharply after the pandemic and peaked in the spring of 2022. They then declined steadily for four years, and by June 2026 they had fallen back to roughly where they were before the pandemic.

That decline was not specific to the profession. The job market as a whole peaked in the same month and fell along almost the same path, and social work postings stayed above the overall market the entire time. For a mental health association, that history matters: much of the decline in postings over this period reflected a market-wide slowdown in hiring, not a fall in the need for mental health professionals.

Social work postings fell with the whole market from 2022 and turned up in June. Source: Indeed Hiring Lab; analysis by Web Scribble.

Is the market turning?

There are early signs that it is. Social work postings reached their low in June and have risen in each of the three months since, the first run of consecutive monthly gains since early 2022.

Postings are still below last year, by about 7% in September. That gap, however, is half of what it was in the spring, when postings were running about 13% below the year before, and it has narrowed in every month since April. Three months of gains is a turn rather than a recovery, and the next few monthly readings will show which it becomes.

Who is hiring mental health professionals?

The employers are as varied as the roles. About one in five counselors works in a private or group practice, and roughly a third work in outpatient mental health centers or in family and community service agencies. Others work in residential treatment facilities and in schools.

Social workers are spread even more widely. More than a quarter work for state and local government, and many of the rest work for family service agencies, outpatient care providers, hospitals and schools. Marriage and family therapists and psychologists add further employers, from private practices to school districts.

Most of these roles require a specific credential or license, which narrows where employers can find qualified candidates. A mental health association's career center reaches exactly those candidates, and that is what makes it valuable to the employers who hire them.

What should a mental health association take from this?

A career center sells into a hiring market it does not control. For four years that market fell, and mental health was not spared. The long-term demand for the profession did not change, however, and the posting data now points in the same direction as the projections.

The simplest benchmark for this year is the market itself. Social work postings fell through the first half of 2026 and rose through the summer. If your career center's employer revenue followed a similar path, the market did its part. If it did not, there is room to grow with the turn now under way.

For next year, it is reasonable to plan for a profession whose long-term demand is growing and a posting market that has stopped falling. The employers that are posting more today are the natural first conversations about the year ahead.

What do these numbers measure?

The projections come from the Bureau of Labor Statistics and describe expected employment and openings over a decade. They are forecasts, not observed hiring. The posting figures come from job postings on Indeed and measure listings, not hires or career center revenue. The social work series covers social workers, case managers and similar community roles at every kind of employer, and it is compared with its level in February 2020, the month before the pandemic. It does not isolate counselors or psychologists, whose postings are spread across several categories.

Mental health demand is growing. The question for a mental health association's career center is how much of that demand it will capture as the hiring market recovers.

Want your career center's employer numbers next to the mental health market? Talk with our team.

Projections: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Projections 2025 to 2035, Table 1.2, Occupational projections and worker characteristics, read November 6, 2026. The combined mental health figure sums 2025 and 2035 employment for substance abuse, behavioral disorder and mental health counselors; marriage and family therapists; clinical and counseling psychologists; and mental health and substance abuse social workers. Openings are annual averages and include replacement openings. Where they work: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Work Environment, largest employers, 2025.

Postings: Indeed Hiring Lab Job Postings Index, US, seasonally adjusted, 7-day trailing average, indexed to Feb 1 2020 = 100. Monthly averages through September 2026, the most recent complete month; retrieved November 6, 2026. Social work postings are the Community & Social Service sector (example titles: case manager, social worker). Year over year compares September 2026 with September 2025. The index measures job postings on Indeed, not hires. github.com/hiring-lab/job_postings_tracker.