Mental Health Counselor and Therapist
SOC 21-1018
⚠⚠ 18 percent growth from 2025 to 2035 and about 50,500 openings a year — against 6 percent for social workers and 6 percent for health education specialists. ⚠⚠⚠ And the numbers behind it are brutal: Florida awards 6,228 psychology bachelor's a year against roughly 372 counselling master's seats, the licensure master's is 60 semester hours rather than the usual 30 to 36, two more supervised years follow it, and the median is $59,350.
Lawyer
SOC 23-1011
Lawyers advise and represent clients in courts, before agencies and in private dealings — researching the law, drafting documents, negotiating, and arguing cases. In Florida the route runs through a Juris Doctor from an ABA-accredited law school, the Florida Bar Examination and the Multistate Professional Responsibility Examination. ⚠ There is no required or preferred undergraduate major: law-school applicants arrive from every field listed below.
Psychology — 3,850 applicants, 5.2% (LSAC, 2018–19). The second-largest single major.
Data Scientist
SOC 15-2051
Data scientists turn messy data into decisions — cleaning and preparing it, building and validating statistical and machine-learning models, and explaining the result to people who will act on it. ⚠ There is no licence, no entrance examination and, for most people now working in the field, no data science degree: the occupation is older than the major.
Psychology — 10 institutions, 6,549 completions. ⚠ Listed because experimental design and inferential statistics are its methods core; the quantitative track is the part that transfers, not the degree as such.
Human Resources Specialist
SOC 13-1071
Human resources specialists recruit and hire, administer pay and benefits, interpret employment law and policy, and handle the disputes and complaints that come with employing people. ⚠ A median of $75,940 across 939,700 jobs, all of it growing. ⚠⚠ It is the most open CHOICE path on this site: business supplies only about a quarter of HR workers, PSYCHOLOGY is the second largest feeder, and 16% have no degree beyond some college. ⚠⚠⚠ And the money is in progression, not credentials — the step to HR manager is worth $73,340 and asks for experience, not another degree.
⚠ Psychology — the SECOND largest feeder into this occupation nationally at about 6% of HR workers, ahead of every other non-business field. Selection, motivation, behaviour and conflict are the subject matter, and this is one of the few well-paid business destinations where a psychology degree is a mainstream route.
Speech-Language Pathologist
SOC 29-1127
Speech-language pathologists diagnose and treat disorders of speech, language, voice and swallowing — in children who are not talking, in stroke patients who have lost words, in people who cannot safely swallow. ⚠ A median of $97,870 and 17% growth, among the best combinations on this site. ⚠⚠⚠ But the bachelor's is NOT a terminal degree: Florida awards 513 of them a year into 298 master's places, and 89% of the profession holds a master's. This page covers the assistant, the pathologist and the audiologist, because the bachelor's only reaches the first.
⚠ Psychology — 10 Florida public institutions and 6,549 credentials, the largest feeder-shaped degree in the state. Named because the board's assistant-licence coursework explicitly includes psychology and normal human development, and because psychology graduates are common applicants to speech-language pathology master's programmes.
Occupational Therapy Assistant
SOC 31-2011
Occupational therapy assistants deliver the treatment that gets people back to doing ordinary things — dressing, cooking, writing, working, playing — after injury, stroke, developmental delay or mental illness. ⚠ A median of $72,300 on a two-year degree, growing 21%. ⚠⚠⚠ And the finding worth acting on: it pays MORE and grows FASTER than the physical therapist assistant, and Florida trains a QUARTER as many. Four institutions, 57 graduates a year. This page covers the assistant, the aide and the therapist.
⚠ Psychology — 10 Florida public institutions and 6,549 credentials. A genuine feeder, because a large part of occupational therapy is cognitive, developmental and mental-health work, and psychology graduates are common applicants to the professional programmes.