highest pay for social worker

[ikibah]

Hey, where do you guys think social workers get paid the most?

I've been looking into this and so far I have found that the VA does a really good job of taking care of their social workers down the line as chief social workers can get paid six digits (plus it's a population I've love to work with so I think this is the route I plan to aim for). Out of curiosity I was wondering where else social worker get paid well....

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[submarine1991]

Prisons? Definitely Active Duty Military, Department of Defense, and the United States Public Health Service. Perhaps private practice and tenured professors?

 

[Goobernut]

Hospitals tend to treat their social workers well. Well, depending on the hospital really. Our uni hospital starts out health social workers a little higher than most. You can work your way up to administration positions.

To echo everyone else, government in any form pays decently for our profession. Except maybe county?

 

[AcronymAllergy]

I'd imagine that social work is similar to psychology in at least some respects re: earnings. The government is great particularly for early career salary and long-term for benefits (as well as job security). Private practice will generally outstrip government's earning potential after a few years, though, with the large caveat that we're talking about successful private practice (preferably with you in some type of owner or part-owner capacity). If you have no intentions/desires of going the business-heavy private practice route, then government or perhaps an academic medical center is likely to be the best bang for the buck in terms of the total employment package.

 

[wesleysmith]

From all of the jobs I've searched through/friends in the field I've questioned I would have thought the VA would be the best in terms of highest salary originally (I don't know about anyones benefits), but, apparently the prison system pays a little better, at least where I live. An MSW just starting out at the prison up north from me makes $80,000.00 approximately, whereas my friend at the local VA makes roughly $63,000.00, with the local hospitals in both areas paying upper 40s lower 50s. Keep in mind these are both VERY low cost of living areas. I have an associates in criminal justice and worked as a corrections officer for some odd years, so I was interested in this population, the only issue I'd have with the prison job is many inmates attend therapy as an excuse to leave their blocks or some such nonsense (I gather this from personal experience in the system as well as from speaking with the prison therapists), so you may work with some very ill patients from time to time, some that truly want to get better, then some that just want to jerk you around for an hour; I think that would become quite tiresome after a while.

EDIT: I just wanted to add something else real quick - I have NO idea how much money this person makes or what their significant other does for a living (so take it for what it is, a simple observation) but the only private practice LCSW (or LMSW as they are in my state) I know of drives a Cadillac Escalade, so somethings has gone terribly right for them (or they are a terrible spendthrift!).

 

[ikibah]

sorry repost

 

[ikibah]

From all of the jobs I've searched through/friends in the field I've questioned I would have thought the VA would be the best in terms of highest salary originally (I don't know about anyones benefits), but, apparently the prison system pays a little better, at least where I live. An MSW just starting out at the prison up north from me makes $80,000.00 approximately, whereas my friend at the local VA makes roughly $63,000.00, with the local hospitals in both areas paying upper 40s lower 50s. Keep in mind these are both VERY low cost of living areas. I have an associates in criminal justice and worked as a corrections officer for some odd years, so I was interested in this population, the only issue I'd have with the prison job is many inmates attend therapy as an excuse to leave their blocks or some such nonsense (I gather this from personal experience in the system as well as from speaking with the prison therapists), so you may work with some very ill patients from time to time, some that truly want to get better, then some that just want to jerk you around for an hour; I think that would become quite tiresome after a while.

EDIT: I just wanted to add something else real quick - I have NO idea how much money this person makes or what their significant other does for a living (so take it for what it is, a simple observation) but the only private practice LCSW (or LMSW as they are in my state) I know of drives a Cadillac Escalade, so somethings has gone terribly right for them (or they are a terrible spendthrift!).

Thanks for this, can you share with me what state this is (or maybe private message me?) I'm very open to moving after graduation and a low-cost of living state that has the potential to find a prison system job starting at $80,000 would likely put it high on my list.

Thanks.

 

[deleted480308]

you can check usajobs.gov for federal prison work and then a few of each of the states websites in places you'd like to work for state jobs

 

[ikibah]

you can check usajobs.gov for federal prison work and then a few of each of the states websites in places you'd like to work for state jobs

Tried this but couldn't really find anything near the 80,000 range

 

[submarine1991]

Ikibah, what did you find? Anything near that amount?

 

[ikibah]

There were very few openings for those only holding an MSW without an lcsw, but the one's I was able to find were between 47k-65k...There are TONS of openings though and you have to click on each specific one to see if being an lcsw is a req. So I may have missed some but from the many I checked out that's what I got.