A Complete Guide to Psychology Careers & Salary Expectations with a PsyD

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Psychology Jobs Can Be Found in Almost Every Kind of Industry and Organization

The truth is, there really aren’t very many fields of endeavor in society today that don’t involve psychology and have a place for professional psychologists at some level. That’s because psychology is the science that holds the keys to understanding society itself, and how we all function within it. The study of minds and behavior is how experts unravel mysteries of politics, learning, lifestyle choices, crime, rehabilitation, retail purchases, and more.

Of course, it’s supremely useful and most used in the understanding and treatment of issues of mental health and wellness. The PsyD is a degree that is specifically designed to develop skills in clinical psychology to treat mental and behavioral illnesses.

For all the many different ways that the mind can make us feel bad, there are psychology careers devoted to making it better.

This is all hugely important for society and humanity, of course, but it’s also a big deal for you, an individual considering a psychology degree. That’s because the sheer diversity of available jobs with a psychology degree gives you almost infinite choices when it comes to finding a work environment, a location, a set of daily tasks, and a salary that will suit your wants and needs.

As you will learn, satisfying those wants and needs is all a part of securing your own happiness and mental well-being.

What Do Jobs in Psychology Have In Common?

While you have a lot of opportunities to choose from when you start looking at PsyD degree jobs, it’s also the case that there are some bedrock elements they will have in common.

One reason for that is the professional nature of the field. Most folks who earn a doctoral degree, in almost every field, have high-paying positions that involve intellectual labor and most often are performed in comfortable offices at regular hours. While you can find exceptions, it’s a simple fact that most jobs you can get with a psychology degree are going to be nine to five desk (or couch!) jobs with weekends free and healthy benefits packages.

There’s also the fact that the educational preparation you get with doctoral training shapes what jobs you can get with a psychology degree. Although specialized concentrations will shift the focus of your coursework, your expertise in core topics like perception, cognition, and emotion mean that you will spend most of your day in any psychology job applying knowledge to issues involving those subjects.

More likely than not, you’ll have a fair amount of direct contact and communication with other people, although this is more common in clinical roles than others. And you will probably be working on topics that impact real people in real-world situations… even if you end up in research or development.

What Kind of Job Can You Get With a Psychology Degree?
The truth is, with some imagination and a little ambition, you can turn a psychology degree into a career in almost any industry.
All those broad applications that psychology has in human relations, decision-making, organization, and leadership make a psych degree excellent preparation for jobs in fields like:
Marketing and sales
Management
Sports
Education and training
Law enforcement
Politics
Try to imagine a field that doesn’t in some way revolve around an understanding of human psychology it’s hard to think of any.
The job doesn’t have to say “psychology” in the title in order to make use of the knowledge and skills that you learn from a degree in the field. More than 6,000 doctoral students per year graduate with degrees in psychology according to 2022 data from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES). That’s enough to supply a decade-worth of job growth for professional psychologists in only two years. The easy inference is that not all of those graduates go on to practice as professional psychologists.

What Kind of Jobs Can You Get With a Psychology Degree?

Although the possibilities are infinite, the reality is that when most people go down the long and challenging path of earning a PsyD, they are most often interested in one of only a few types of practice or specialty area.

Many of these also happen to be exactly the kinds of jobs that the market is looking to fill. There’s great demand for PsyD graduates out there in particular fields. Odds are, one or more of these will line up with your interests in earning that degree in the first place.

These are far from the only kind of psychology jobs you can land with a PsyD, but they are some of the most common and most lucrative. See what you can do at a glance… or go on to our detailed career and salary pages for even more information.

Educational Psychologist

Many people imagine jobs in educational psychology as being the same as school counseling, but the job description and audiences for the two careers are different.

An educational psychologist studies how individuals learn and retain information.

Educational psychology careers apply that knowledge to research programs, instructional design, and even social systems. As a life-long process, learning isn’t something that’s just for kids and doesn’t happen just in schools. These jobs come in anywhere information has to be presented and absorbed.

So educational psychologists have become vitally important today in areas such as:

Classroom management
Age-appropriate curriculum design
Learning style engagement
Student disciplinary practices
Developmental research
Technology design and instruction
Special education issues

They’re also at the forefront of understanding and avoiding some of the more threatening phenomena in the American educational system, such as school shootings and their aftermath.

Forensic Psychologist

There’s an excellent chance you’re thinking about forensic psychology careers because you have watched one too many episodes of CSI. But real world forensic psychology isn’t like what you see on TV. It’s even cooler.

Forensic psychologists apply psychological factors to questions and principles of law.

That’s because these pros take their knowledge of the drivers of criminal behavior and apply it in positions with:

Law offices and legal consultancies
Political and public service
Research and policy organizations
Corrections facilities

Forensic psychologist salaries reflect the importance that this role plays in law, society, and justice. Finding forensic jobs with PsyD or PhD credentials allows you to shape individual lives as well as community safety.

Clinical Psychologist

Clinical psychology encapsulates what people think of as the classic practice of psychology. Couches, penetrating conversation, deep insights… it’s all here.

Clinical psychologists offer direct diagnosis and treatment of a broad range of mental health issues across the population and in many different specialty areas.

Clinical psychology is far and away the most popular specialization with the broadest applications in the field. A clinical PsyD is a licensing qualification anywhere in the country; a clinical psychologist PsyD salary is the baseline against which most other average salary of PsyD graduates are compared.

Whether in independent practice or working for entities like hospitals, residential treatment facilities, outpatient clinics, or nonprofits, these are some of the most common jobs to get with a psychology degree… and some of those with the most direct patient contact.

Family Psychologist

Family psychology is complex, but that’s why many people enjoy it. It’s tough enough to plumb the mind of individuals in all their variety. Jobs in family psychology require that you do so not just for multiple people and in different life stages, but also accounting for all the interactions of those minds and the unique impacts they have on each other.

Couple and family psychologists deal with the complexities of interacting thoughts, behaviors, and emotions in relationships and treating dysfunction that arises within them.

They most often work in direct treatment roles in hospitals and clinics or private practice, but can also be found working for government agencies, educational organizations, or in the correctional system. They can play an important role in assessing stability and mending home lives for vulnerable populations; the salary of PsyD graduates in family psychology comes with the extra satisfaction of helping glue households together.

Marriage and Family Therapist

Marriage and family therapy is a specific branch of psychotherapy that is related to family psychology, but can be practiced in most states with a license that requires only a master’s degree.

Marriage and family therapists treat couples and families with directed and practical therapy to mend rifts and unhappiness that arise in relationships.

Marriage and family therapist salaries therefore aren’t going to land on the same level as a salary for PsyD graduates, but are quite healthy for the field of counseling and therapy overall. Most MFTs practice independently, but they are also found working directly for the government, in outpatient care centers, and in other healthcare clinic settings.

School Psychologist

School psychologists are a sort of educational psychologist, but more specialized in working with children and younger adults in structured learning environments. They often have different qualifications and state-level licensing processes than other psychologists.

School psychologists are a specialized and specially licensed profession that works in schools and educational settings to assist students, teachers, and administrators in achieving the best possible environment for learning.

Their role is both to evaluate and counsel. They work directly with students, evaluating them for issues that may impact their ability to learn, and serving as an interface for outside resources. They also are a resource themselves for teachers and administrators, bringing psychological expertise in human development and learning processes to help deal with challenges in the classroom environment.

School psychologist salaries come with many of the benefits that other educators enjoy in robust time-off and benefits. Better yet, these are jobs that bring with them the joy and hope of shaping the lives of a new generation.

Social Psychologist

Humans are social creatures, and social psychology is the study of how we constantly and collectively influence the thoughts and patterns of one another. While most forms of psychological practice revolve around the activities of one mind or only a handful, social psychology paints a bigger picture: how all our thoughts come together in society.

Social psychologists use psychological principles to understand social interaction and the structure of human culture and society, and how those factors influence individual mental health and cognition.

Social psychology jobs are often research positions, seeking explanations for collective behaviors or ways to influence them. Explorations of race, discrimination, misinformation, and influence are all hot issues for jobs in social psychology. An understanding of interpersonal and group dynamics is important for employers like:

Government agencies
Nonprofit social organizations
Private companies, particularly in product research or marketing roles

School Counselor

School counseling is a psychology job that creates a critical bridge between school systems, children, and families. Counselors typically receive a specialized education that includes coursework required by their state for licensing, which includes by psychology and educational training.

School counselors deliver screening, advice, information, referrals, and just plain-old encouragement to youth in elementary, middle, and high schools.

School counselor jobs are almost all found in public or private school systems.

Neuropsychologist

When people talk about the highest paying jobs with a psychology degree, neuropsychology inevitably enters the conversation. These jobs are on the cutting edge of connecting what doctors and scientists can observe and test with the cognition and emotion that we each experience.

Neuropsychologists explore the connections between biological processes and activity in the brain and the thoughts, feelings, and perceptions that result from them.

Those connections are so important that the applications of neuroscience can be found in many different fields. Primarily, you will find neuroscientist jobs in research and healthcare. They may be part of teams that treat patients with mental or physical illnesses directly, or responsible for creating and testing new theories to improve treatments in the future. They can also find work helping model human thought processes for other purposes, such as in the development of artificial intelligence.

Neuropsychology salaries are high, but so are the demands of the job.

Industrial/Organizational Psychologist

It may surprise you to learn that some of the highest paid psychology jobs in the world belong to I/O psychologists. But it shouldn’t.

Industrial-organizational psychologists study the psychological principles of human behavior in organized groups and applied work environments.

That’s because I/O psychology has the answers that businesses and governments need to create more effective, more efficient work environments. I/O psychologists may work directly with employees or teams, but most often provide analysis and advice to leaders looking to get more from their organizations.

Understanding group behavior, motivation, attitude, and coordination, as well as related human performance factors like decision theory, performance assessment, and task analysis are skills that make companies money. So they are willing to cut big paychecks to I/O psychologists in order to get the benefits of that expertise.

Sports Psychologist

Sports psychology jobs are the dream PsyD jobs for many people who love explorations of the mind and love competition and games. They use their knowledge of human development, social interaction, behavior, and motivation to help both teams and individual players achieve optimal performance.

Sports psychologists analyze and optimize the connections between the mind and physical performance to lead players and teams to peak performance.

Because this is a popular field and demand is limited, PsyD salary levels in sports psychology face market pressures. But because performance pays off big at the highest levels, sports psychologists can command top dollar when they know their stuff.

Professional sports teams, major colleges, Olympic athletes, and even big high school programs may hire sports psychologists. Individual practice is also a popular opportunity, consulting with individuals or teams to optimize training practices, overcome yips, or even evaluate opponents.

Addiction Counselor

If there is a field in which PsyD-qualified professionals are needed now more than ever, it is in addiction psychology. The American addiction crisis is cascading across the country and impacting lives, homes, and families. Addiction counseling is the specialty that brings an understanding of biochemical processes and behavioral principles to bear on healing this terrible disease.

Addiction counselors evaluate, diagnose, and treat people experiencing addiction using behavioral and other therapies in a variety of settings including in-patient and out-patient centers.

Many addiction counselors work independently, but the largest employers are government agencies and contractors, along with non-profit organizations fighting the addiction crisis. There are many specialties within addiction counseling, including gambling, drugs, and alcohol.

Addiction counselor salary levels can vary with education level. Most states require licensing that has various degree requirements, but demand is high for this critical psychology degree job.

Mental Health Psychologist

Jobs focused on mental health supports are the classic and best use case for psychology degrees. The PsyD average salary rates are probably bulging in the middle with mental health psychologists making up the bulk of people in the broad field of psychology.

Mental health psychologists support mental wellness and appropriate behavioral and emotional regulation in patients across the lifespan.

Mental health psychologists may engage directly in counseling work, but the position can also embrace research, supervision, planning, advising, and even teaching duties. The role calls for strong clinical skills but has room for growth. Some mental health psychologists may even become psychometrician, designing standardized tests for other psychologists.

Naturally, most of them work either as independent providers or for healthcare or mental health counseling organizations. They can be found in inpatient or outpatient treatment facilities, or even working with outreach organizations exploring larger issues of public mental health.

Counseling Psychologist

Counseling is the most rewarding role among all psychology jobs, even before you start to account for counseling psychology salary levels. Using training in therapy techniques and a deep understanding of how the mind works, counselors bring hope and relief to people from every walk of life.

Counseling psychologists directly treat people whose mental health issues impact their lives and welfare.

Many counseling psychologists work independently, establishing their own practices. Others work in facilities like:

Hospitals
Inpatient treatment facilities
Clinics and outpatient treatment centers
Nursing homes
Correctional facilities

It’s possible to specialize according to bother different families of psychological problems as well as specific demographic groups, like children or women. What’s true of almost all counseling psychology jobs is that the bulk of their time comes in one-to-one or group sessions directly with patients, engaging with their problems and using your training to solve them.

Occupational Psychologist

Occupational psychology is another term for industrial/organizational psychology. The salary levels for occupational psychologists are the same; so is the working environment and the broad spectrum of applications that you can find for the skills.

Occupational psychologists deal with issues in the workplace and building teams and productivity.

If you’re looking for a PsyD degree salary that regularly comes in at the top tier of what’s possible, look no further.

Child Psychiatrist

Psychiatry is a medical field that also relies heavily on expertise in psychology. Child psychiatrists, then, aren’t really making the salary of a PsyD, but one of an MD.

Child psychiatrists are medical doctors who specialize in treating mental health and behavioral disorders in young and adolescent patients.

Their combined skillset in medicine and psychology makes them worth every penny, however. They can offer comprehensive diagnosis and care for all kinds of medical and behavioral issues, whether they stem from psychological or biological causes. Their treatment techniques can range from traditional psychological therapy to advanced medical procedures or prescription medications.

Treating such issues in children requires sensitivity as well as great skill. Child psychiatrists may work for:

General or specialized children’s hospitals
Residential treatment facilities
Healthcare clinics
Government agencies, including school systems
Independent medical practices

Psychiatric Technician

Psychologists get the advanced education and on-the-job practical experience to make the hard calls about diagnosis, treatment planning, and causes of mental conditions. But when it comes time to actually caring for patients, they are often eclipsed by people in another role: psychiatric technicians.

Psychiatric technicians take care of day-to-day oversight and care of patients in psychological treatment settings.

Psychiatric technician salaries are nowhere close to psychologists, but neither are the job requirements: in many states this position can be landed with only a high school diploma, although specialized training for licensure is required in some places.

Psych techs work in residential and outpatient treatment facilities. Their main role is implementing treatment plans and assisting patients in recovery. They develop a far more personal relationship, making important observations and caring for daily needs in a way that psychologists do not.

Psychometrist

Testing is commonly a part of the diagnostic process in psychological treatment, and the world of psychology needs experts in conducting and scoring those tests: psychometrists.

Psychometrists deliver and score standard psychology tests for both businesses and healthcare providers.

Psychometrists are experts in assessing patients with standardized tests. They have the observational skills to interpret complex psychological tests and the interpersonal abilities to put patients at ease. The role can often be found with independent clinical psychology practices, at hospitals, and in residential treatment facilities. But because psychological tests are also common in some industries to evaluate performance and employment, psychometrists have a wide range of places they can work.

The job usually requires only a bachelor’s degree in psychology, but psychometrist positions often have both a solid salary and excellent work-life balance.

What Are the Best Remote Psychology Jobs?

Like every other kind of career, more and more of the jobs you can get with a psychology degree are starting to become available as mostly remote positions.

Unlike some other kinds of work, though, there are special considerations in online psychology jobs.

First, many jobs in psychology are licensed positions. Licensing is handled on a state-by-state level, and reciprocity is not guaranteed. So for these positions, you may not need to be in the same room or even same town, necessarily, but you may not be able to work from the other side of the country, either.

Forty-two states participate in PSYPACT, an interstate legal compact that facilitates the practice of telepsychology across state boundaries.

Next, there are sometimes other rules for practicing telehealth under a psychologist’s license that vary from state to state. Some, for instance, may allow you to temporarily practice across state lines while others prevent it. In other cases, even within the same state, practicing distance therapy may have certain other restrictions or different guidelines to follow from conventional therapy.

Finally, there are ethical considerations at play in telehealth work for psychologists. Your ability to deliver clinical services remotely must meet the same standards as the treatment you provide in person. That means getting adequate technology and training to offer clear, understandable, reliable service.

Remote Psychology Jobs Can Be Found in Various Roles Across Industries Many Industries

Once you get past those details, however, you’ll find that all kinds of different positions are open for remote workers with a PsyD or other psychology degree.

While the regulatory and ethical issues are a factor for clinical positions in telehealth treatment, plenty of psychology jobs don’t involve direct therapy. You can find online psychology degree jobs like:

Psychology Exam Prep Writer and Reviewer
Healthcare Admissions
Quantitative UX Researcher
Career Assessment Professional
Learning Design Leader
Training Consultant
Psychometrician
Professional Development Coach
Behavioral Health Case Manager

It’s particularly easy to find remote jobs that involve case review, consulting, or supervision. Outside the restrictions on clinical treatment required for licensing, these tend to be exactly the sort of knowledge-work that can easily be performed from anywhere with an internet connection.

They have all the advantages of any sort of remote work—flexibility to live your life where you find the best fit, the complete absence of a commute, and usually a degree of freedom in organizing your day around when you are most productive.

Even some school psychologist positions can be partly remote.

Even for some clinical positions, online options are a gift for both patients and psychologists. Crisis Intervention Clinicians, for example, can respond more quickly and more effectively through phone or internet than having to show up in person.

A Look at the Highest Paying Jobs With a Psychology Degree Available Today

Most people don’t really go into jobs in psychology strictly for the money, but salary levels are often a factor. Since many psychology jobs come with high job satisfaction, it only makes sense to find the options that also deliver a strong return on your educational investment.

According to 2023 data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, those jobs hands-down belong in one particular category of psychology practice: industrial/organizational psychology.

BLS tracks three specific categories of psychologist in their salary and employment data. Here they are ranked by top salary level, with the category median salary also presented for context:

Industrial-Organizational Psychologists – $147,420 to $219,810
Clinical and Counseling Psychologists – $96,100 to $168,870
All Other Psychologists – $117,750 to $157,420
School Psychologists – $84,940 to $131,470

Within the world of I-O psychologists, you can aim even higher, however. At the median level, the top-paying industries for those jobs are:

Management, scientific, and technical consulting services – $169,890
Local governments – $164,850
Scientific research and development services – $132,560
Management of companies and enterprises – $127,950
State government – $96,030

Naturally, the actual top salary you can pull down even within these categories will further depend on your experience, exact specialization, and location. Unfortunately, BLS doesn’t go into any more detail about specialties, and didn’t collect enough data to compile location averages for most states.

What Are Some Low Stress, High Paying Jobs in Psychology?

Ah, now here is a question from someone who has really absorbed the coursework in their Psych 101 class. All the money in the world is no good if you find yourself needing more therapy at the end of the day than you have delivered to your clients.

These kinds of positions are the golden ring in psychology degree jobs: high levels of income without crazy level of on-the-job stress.

Fortunately, you’re in luck here. According to a publication of survey data from the APA, the field of psychology jobs with the highest level of individual satisfaction was found to be in professional services. As you might recall from our look at the highest paying psychology jobs, that just happens to line up pretty closely with the top-paying industry for the top-paying role in psychology: management, scientific, and technical consulting services as an industrial-organizational psychologist.

Is There a Difference Between PsyD vs PhD Salary Rates in Psychology?
Students getting ready to apply to doctoral programs in psychology are faced with a choice: the relatively new and less common PsyD (Doctor of Psychology), or the more traditional and more available PhD in Psychology?
You’re probably already familiar with the major differences between the two types of programs from an academic perspective. But you might also like to know if one or the other typically leads to higher salary levels out in the job market.
There’s no convincing evidence one way or the other from a particularly reliable source. The Bureau of Labor Statistics does not categorize psychologist salaries by educational attainment. The National Center for Education Statistics does so but puts both PsyD and PhD degrees into a single doctoral category. So does the APA.
One analysis published in 2015 based on a national survey of college graduates by the National Science Foundation found a nominal difference, with PhDs earning around $10,000 more per year on average. This was attributed to the PsyD being a professional degree, with limited focus in clinical treatment, as opposed to a more general academic and research-oriented PhD.
Yet you can run the same argument in reverse, since clinical psychologists today often make more than their counterparts without licenses.
The best answer may be that you are more likely to do well, and be more motivated, with whichever of those degrees that you prefer—and as every psychologist knows, that can make all the difference.

Here’s the bad news: that same BLS data shows that there are fewer than 500 people employed in those roles nationwide.

But you can still take solace in the fact that the APA found that, overall, 93 percent of psychologists surveyed reported that they were either somewhat satisfied or very satisfied in their jobs.

Why the Highest Paying Jobs in Psychology May Not Necessarily Be the Best Option for You

Something you’ll learn as you earn your psychology degree is the vast range of human tastes and experience. Uncountable combinations of genetics, growth, learning, and other nearly random variable create conditions where what makes any single one of us happiest can be hugely different from what the next person prefers.

While money has something to do with it, your predecessors have proven that it might not be as much as you think.

A famous 2010 study by Daniel Kahneman and Angus Deaton found that more income does indeed buy more happiness… but only up to a certain point. Wau back when that study was published, it was $75,000. We could pretty easily call that $100k-plus in today’s dollars. Beyond that, though, more money had very little correlation with reported happiness.

Other studies since have found other dollar values, and naturally, specific numbers depend on local costs and other variables. But the reality is that for almost all people, there appears to be a sort of plateau. And with the generally high salaries available in all kinds of psychology degree jobs, that plateau may be closer than you imagine.

A PsyD Can Even Steer Your Career Into High-Level Management Roles

Psychology careers are built, like every other, one year at a time. While you will start your PsyD program with some idea of what you want to do at work, and aim at a particular field of employment when you graduate, there are also pretty good odds your interest and expertise will shift over the course of a long career in psychology.

This is both a natural result of you finding new things in psychology to explore, and greater access to more interesting positions with a stronger resume.

The places you end up may be surprising, however.

The APA’s 2019 survey of doctoral professionals split the group in three: early, mid, and senior to late senior levels. They tracked job titles against these groups.

The title Psychologist was the most common at every stage, unsurprisingly. But things start to shift at the mid-stage career level. A notable increase occurred in several categories:

Counselors
Postsecondary teachers in psychology or education
Other social sciences

At the senior level, teaching positions receded, and management positions start to become more common:

Top-level managers, executives, administrators
Medical and health services managers
Other management related occupations
Diagnostic and treatment practitioners

These reflect employment options that just aren’t available right after you earn your PsyD.

The Highest Paying Psychology Jobs Go to the Most Experienced Professionals

That kind of progression should help make it clear that earning top salary numbers with a PsyD is not just a matter of the degree itself, or even your area of specialization. Much of it comes with the expertise you build only with experience.

You probably shouldn’t even expect to earn the average PsyD degree salary numbers ($92,740 annually for 2023, according to BLS) right away.

But with practice and experience, you’ll find opportunities to climb toward the top ten percent salary level of $151,880, or higher in many specialties. You can bet that even as senior psychologists are shifting into management and even educational roles, they are watching their take-home pay rise along the way.

You can see how this process tends to wash out differences in PhD vs PsyD salary, of PsyD concentrations, or even that hot postdoctoral fellowship you managed to land. Launching your psychology career on the right trajectory is never a mistake. But it’s probably a mistake to assume it will fly exactly along the course you’ve planned for, either.

When it comes to salary, PsyD degrees will remain a strong investment no matter what. So a focus on the kind of job and working environment that interests you most could ultimately pay the biggest dividends.