Nine Best States for a Career In Substance Use Counseling
Key Insights
- Nine states have higher-than-average salaries and job growth rates for substance use counselors.
- Hawaii offers the highest pay and Utah has the fastest job growth.
- Arkansas has the highest substance use counselor salaries compared to the average salary for all jobs in that state.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) projects substance use counseling jobs to grow by 18% in the 2022-2032 period. This is much faster than the average job growth across the U.S., which is around 3%. This rapid growth may be partly due to increasing cultural empathy toward people with substance use disorder. Another factor could be the fairly low barrier to entry for this type of counseling; in most cases, substance use counselors can practice with only a bachelor's degree in substance use counseling or a similar field.
However, employment opportunities can vary from state to state for substance use counselors, as can the pay. Which states offer the best career opportunities for practicing substance use counseling? To answer this question, our study considers two factors:
- Annual mean wages, or the average salaries of all substance use counselors in a state.
- Employment projections for substance use counselors in a state.
Read on to learn how we analyzed these factors in order to find the states with the best career opportunities for substance use counselors.
How We Talk About Substance Use
The treatment community has begun phasing out the term “substance abuse” in favor of the less judgemental “substance use.” We can see this change in emerging job titles, with “substance use counselor” or “addictions counselor” becoming more common than “substance abuse counselor.”
The treatment community has begun phasing out the term “substance abuse” in favor of the less judgemental “substance use.”
Many degree programs still use outdated terminology, but we use the industry-preferred term throughout this article.
Top States for Substance Use Counselors
To find the best states for substance use counseling work, we first gathered the annual mean wage data in each state. We then compared substance use counselor wages to the state’s overall average salary for all jobs. Thirteen states made the first cut because their substance use counselors earned more than the state’s mean salary.
Finally, we compared the projected job growth for substance use counselors in these 13 states to the occupation’s national average growth rate of 18%. Only nine of the 13 states had growth rates of at least 19% for substance use counselors.
Therefore, the table below shows the states with relatively high pay for their area and excellent projected job growth. We listed these top states alphabetically but did not rank them because we didn’t want to give greater weight to either pay or job outlook.
Best States for a Career in Substance Use Counseling
Below, we offer some insights about the substance use counseling profession in each of the top states:
Arkansas
The Natural State features a striking data point: Substance use counselors in Arkansas earn much higher salaries than the annual mean wage in the state. A substance use counselor in this state might expect to make nearly $15,000 more than an average employee in the same area. The BLS even singles out the as the rural region with the second-highest wages for these counselors in the country.
These salary numbers are especially good news for substance use counselors in Arkansas considering that the state has one of the lowest costs of living in the nation. Salaries here might stretch further than in more expensive areas. You can even earn a substance use counseling degree in Arkansas.
Hawaii
Hawaii is the highest-paying state on our list. In fact, substance use counselors in Hawaii earn the second-highest mean salaries nationwide; only Alaska tops them. But even the state's relatively high wages can be strained by the cost of living in the Aloha State, which is the most expensive area of the country.
Hawaii’s substance use counselor job growth is 25%, which is over eight times the national average for all jobs. Urban Honolulu has the highest concentration of these jobs, but counselors on Maui tend to earn the most.
Idaho
Idaho’s wages and job growth aren’t as high as some of the other top states on our list. The Gem State is also in the middle of the pack when it comes to the cost of living, so the $59,370 mean salary may not go as far as it would in a less expensive state.
But substance use counseling in Idaho still offers excellent pay compared to all other Idaho jobs, and a 19% job growth outlook is phenomenal. Most of the state’s substance use counselors practice in larger cities.
Iowa
Substance use counselors in Iowa don’t make vastly greater salaries than the average worker in the state, though the pay is still about $3,000 above average. However, the Hawkeye State features an impressive 30% job growth outlook for these roles. This is the second-highest growth rate on our list and seventh for the U.S. overall.
Currently, the population of substance use counselors is nearly twice as dense in Iowa as in the wider nation. Positions are spread fairly evenly throughout the state, including nonmetropolitan areas.
Nevada
Nevada substance use counselors make a mean wage of $64,890, which is significantly higher than the mean annual pay for the role nationwide — and over $9,000 more than the average pay for all Nevada jobs. The 26.3% job growth rate is also very healthy.
There aren’t very many substance use counselors in the state, with just 1,220 for a population greater than 3 million. More than 1,000 of these professionals are either in Las Vegas or Reno.
North Dakota
North Dakota has solid metrics for substance use counselors. North Dakota's substance use counselors earn mean yearly wages that are nearly $5,000 higher than the state average. While the 19.5% growth rate is higher than the national average, it's on the low end among our top states.
Keep in mind that there are only 730 substance use, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors to cover the whole state. The largest contingent of them practice in Fargo, with Bismarck not far behind. There are very few counselors covering rural areas.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is toward the low end in terms of pay among our top nine states for substance use counseling. But counselors still pull a mean wage $6,000 above the average Oklahoma worker. Interestingly, the highest paying jobs are in the Fort Smith area straddling the Oklahoma-Arkansas border.
About three-quarters of Oklahoma’s substance use counselors work in the two largest cities, Oklahoma City and Tulsa. Not only are there fewer jobs in rural areas, they tend to pay less.
Utah
Among the top states on our list, Utah features the second highest salaries for substance use counselors. Their annual wages are nearly $8,000 higher than the average pay in the Beehive State.
But the most notable data point is the blazing-fast expansion — 37.2% — of substance use counseling jobs in Utah. Only Arizona has a higher growth rate. Salt Lake City is currently home to about 45% of Utah’s substance use counselor positions, which tend to pay better than nonmetropolitan areas of the state.
Wyoming
Wyoming has only 630 substance use counselors in the entire state, but they earn well and their numbers are expanding quickly. Notably, the state has almost the exact same ratio of substance use counselors to total population as the wider U.S. does. There are actually more Wyoming substance use counselors spread throughout rural areas and small towns than there are concentrated in cities.
Data Limitations
We chose the best nine states for substance use counselors based on a combination of high mean salaries and projected job growth that’s faster than the national average. But these factors don’t guarantee a well-paid and stable position in one of these states, and plenty of counselors in this field have rewarding careers elsewhere.
Would-be substance use counselors may also want to consider where they want to live, what the cost of living is there, and whether licensure or certification requires more than a bachelor’s degree in certain states.
Methodology
We gathered data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics site for . The two data points we collected for each state were annual mean wage and projected percentage change in job outlook, both from the May 2022 dataset. We also noted the BLS numbers for each state’s annual mean wage for all occupations combined.
For our purposes, the top states for substance use counseling jobs had the following:
- Mean annual wages above the state’s mean annual wages for all jobs
- A job growth outlook at least one percentage point above the national average of 18% for substance use counselors
Rhode Island was the only state we didn’t consider because no mean wage data was available for substance use counselors.