42.01 Psychology, General · 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.
| Role | SOC | 2025 median | Employed | Openings/yr | Entry |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mental health / substance abuse counselor | 21-1018 | ⚠ $59,350 | ✅ 533,400 | ✅ 50,500 | master's, 60 hours |
| Marriage and family therapist | 21-1013 | $66,940 | 77,800 | 7,700 | master's (87%) |
| Clinical / counseling psychologist | 19-3033 | ✅ $100,580 | 76,300 | ⚠ 4,800 | ⚠⚠ doctorate — 48% report post-doctoral training |
⚠⚠⚠ $41,230 separates the counselor from the psychologist, and the difference is a doctorate plus, for about half the field, post-doctoral training. But the counselor role has ten times the annual openings. That is the trade, and it is unusually clean.
✅ The growth is genuine and large. BLS projects counselors to grow 18 percent from 2025 to 2035 — set that against 6 percent for social workers and 6 percent for health education specialists on the same projection round. Demand is not the problem in this field.
| Florida public institutions | Credentials a year | |
|---|---|---|
| Psychology bachelor's | 10 universities (plus 27 state colleges teaching the prefix) | ⚠⚠ 6,228 |
| Counselor education master's | 8 | 285 |
| Mental health counseling master's | ⚠ 2 | 57 |
| Marriage and family therapy master's | 4 | 30 |
| All counselling master's | 8 | ⚠⚠⚠ ~372 |
⚠⚠ Do not read that as a queue. Private institutions add seats, and most psychology graduates are not trying to become counsellors. Read it as the reason to plan the graduate step in your FIRST year rather than your last — because the bachelor's on its own does not qualify you to practise anything, and the bottleneck is real.
✅ And the psychology bachelor's is a good degree. This site's own evidence: LSAC recorded 3,850 psychology applicants to law school, and Census microdata puts psychology THIRD among the undergraduate fields held by medical and health services managers, at 47,154 people. It goes places. It just does not go here by itself.
285 of Florida's roughly 372 counselling master's seats are coded COUNSELOR EDUCATION — an education code — against 57 under mental health counseling and 30 under marriage and family therapy.
The course prefixes say the same thing:
| Prefix | State colleges | Universities |
|---|---|---|
PSY psychology | ✅ 27 | 11 |
DEP developmental | 27 | 10 |
CLP clinical | 24 | 10 |
⚠⚠ MHS mental health services | ⚠⚠⚠ 1 | 9 |
⚠⚠⚠ Psychology is everywhere and the counselling curriculum is almost nowhere. MHS is a graduate prefix carried by nine universities and a single state college, and Florida's most widely carried counselling course is MHS6450 Addictions Counseling at eight institutions.
⚠ The practical instruction: when you search for a graduate counselling programme, search the college of education. A psychology major who looks only at psychology departments will conclude Florida barely teaches this, and will be wrong by a factor of five.
A normal master's is 30 to 36 credit hours. Florida's statute sets the LMHC degree at 60, with eleven named content areas at three hours each, 700 supervised hours inside the degree and 280 of those in direct client services.
⚠⚠⚠ Then two more years of post-master's supervised practice before you are licensed. Counting from a bachelor's: roughly two to three years of coursework and four to five years before independent practice. At a $59,350 median.
⚠ This is not an argument against the work. The demand is the strongest on this page and the work matters. It is an argument for knowing the length and the number before you start, because the field's own literature tends to lead with the growth rate and stop there.
⚠⚠⚠ Decide in your first year, not your last. Roughly 372 counselling master's seats a year in Florida against 6,228 psychology bachelor's means the graduate application is the whole game, and it rewards research experience, relevant work and faculty who know you.
⚠⚠ Look at the college of education when you search. Most of the seats are there, under counselor education.
⚠⚠ Compare the LMHC against the LCSW deliberately. Both are licensed under Florida chapter 491 with two post-master's years. But social work has 1,164 master's seats a year against counselling's 372, a wider set of exits (healthcare social work $67,880, macro practice $71,900 against the counselor's $59,350), and an advanced-standing route worth 22 credit hours if you take the CSWE-accredited bachelor's.
⚠ If the doctorate interests you, know what it costs. Clinical psychology pays $100,580 and 48% of the occupation reports post-doctoral training on top of the doctorate, on 4,800 openings a year.
And get direct client hours early, in any setting. Crisis lines, residential programmes, case aide work and substance use programmes all count as experience for admission, and they also tell you whether you can do this before you spend sixty credit hours finding out.
A program is a field of study, one level above a degree — each page says which degrees it covers and which Florida institutions award them. ⚠ The count is institutions that awarded a credential in the field in 2023; it is not a promise that a school runs this exact degree, and it counts something different from the course-based list further down.
Programs worth knowing about if you are considering this career — ⚠ they do not lead to it. Each row says what it is and is not.
No other career on this site is filed in the same field yet — which says nothing about the career, only that we have not written its neighbours. Browse all career paths, or see what else is filed under PSYCHOLOGY.
Selected, not exhaustive — the courses specific to this path plus the foundations it is built on. A course number does not identify a course in Florida: always check your own institution's catalog and take a syllabus to an adviser.
39 Florida public institutions teach courses on this path. The count is how many of the 15 listed courses each one carries — it shows where the path is best covered. It is not a statement that a school offers this as a degree; for that, check the institution’s own programme list.
Requirements change. These are the authorities that decide them — check them directly before committing to a route.
Last updated 23 September 2026.