If you’re currently working in the field or looking to study, you’ll want to keep this list of the best states for social workers in your back pocket.
Social workers help other people cope with and solve problems in their lives. There is a group of social workers called the clinical social group where those individuals are able to give diagnoses and treat mental, behavioral, and emotional issues. Social workers are employed in a variety of places, like mental health clinics, schools, child welfare, hospitals, and private practices. If you’re a social worker or have a degree in social work there are a variety of fields you can get into, as evidenced by the number of places one can work.
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In order to become a social worker, you need a degree in social work, which sounds easy enough. If you want to become a clinical social worker, which opens up more job opportunity, you’ll need a postgraduate degree and two years of experience after that point. To work in the field you need to have a license in the state you’re practicing, too, and we’ll help you out in picking the best state for that in a moment.
Social workers are needed everywhere since people are always going through issues that require them to seek help. Demand is generally always high, which is evidenced on our list of the 11 Cities with the Highest Demand for Social Workers. Demand isn’t the only factor when it comes to choosing a place to live, though. You’re probably also interested in salary. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, in 2015 the average annual salary was $45,900, which comes to about $22.07 an hour.
This career path isn’t easy, as you might end up having to work weekends and holidays. You probably want your time off to be paid, too, especially if you work a ton of overtime. Because of this, we took into consideration the best states to move, live, work, and earn a good amount of money in, using the Bureau of Labor Statistics as the jumping off point. We considered social workers in all fields, like child, family, school, healthcare, and more. The two main criteria we considered were the cost of living index and the average annual salary. We took the average of those to get the best idea of the best states for social workers. The reason we took the average is because it doesn’t matter if a state’s salary is high if it costs too much to live there. We wanted to make sure the combinations of high salary and low cost of living index made it to the top of the list.
Pack your bags and get your notebooks ready for your new job!
