Healthcare Social Workers
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays healthcare social workers the most, $94,100. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Nevada wins, at $66,028. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For healthcare social workers, the District of Columbia leads both nominally at $94,100 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Nevada first at $66,028. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$67,880
People doing it
187,630
Highest paid
$94,100
DC
Best off, really
$66,028
NV, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$46,220
Highest tenth
$100,360
Lowest, really
$50,405
CO
States with data
51
National average
$71,790
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
96.98%
NV, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- The state you work in changes what this job pays, but less than you would expect. Level out tax and prices and the whole country sits between $50,405 and $66,028. That is a real difference. It is not usually a moving-house difference.
- 187,630 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $67,880. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $67,880, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation for healthcare social workers is contained relative to other occupations, and narrows further under adjustment: the real range is $50,405 to $66,028. A differential of this magnitude is real but rarely decisive on its own, which is worth stating plainly against wage tables that present nominal gaps without either adjustment.
- National employment in healthcare social workers is 187,630 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for healthcare social workers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Healthcare Social Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $46,220 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $67,880 |
| Top tenth earn over | $100,360 |
| This salary | $67,880 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Healthcare Social Workers
The national median for this job
$67,880around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $46,220 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $67,880 |
| Top tenth | $100,360 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Healthcare Social Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $55,640 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $94,100 |
| Spread | $38,460 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $69,990 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $72,025 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| NV | $78,470 | $64,034 | $66,028 |
| VT | $81,140 | $62,667 | $64,849 |
| ID | $74,500 | $58,146 | $63,599 |
| UT | $78,150 | $60,331 | $63,505 |
| DC | $94,100 | $69,999 | $63,174 |
| NH | $78,260 | $63,886 | $60,644 |
| CA | $89,660 | $67,659 | $60,098 |
| TX | $69,990 | $58,068 | $59,756 |
| ND | $62,860 | $52,688 | $59,486 |
| CT | $79,900 | $61,395 | $59,211 |
| WA | $78,570 | $64,104 | $59,048 |
| NM | $65,930 | $53,222 | $58,883 |
| HI | $85,420 | $63,874 | $58,811 |
| NJ | $82,690 | $63,925 | $58,710 |
| RI | $75,390 | $59,460 | $58,632 |
| OR | $84,350 | $61,340 | $58,574 |
| MN | $73,970 | $57,361 | $58,284 |
| IA | $63,050 | $51,057 | $57,518 |
| WY | $62,260 | $52,206 | $57,465 |
| ME | $71,610 | $55,694 | $57,359 |
| WI | $66,910 | $53,384 | $57,342 |
| MI | $67,600 | $53,764 | $57,084 |
| MD | $76,440 | $59,338 | $57,075 |
| MS | $62,250 | $49,800 | $57,050 |
| KY | $64,080 | $51,543 | $56,974 |
| OH | $63,610 | $52,258 | $56,918 |
| IN | $64,580 | $52,194 | $56,620 |
| LA | $61,080 | $49,812 | $56,383 |
| KS | $64,440 | $50,650 | $56,300 |
| TN | $61,240 | $51,386 | $55,544 |
| NE | $62,420 | $50,198 | $55,543 |
| SD | $57,510 | $48,389 | $54,929 |
| MA | $76,440 | $59,104 | $54,605 |
| NC | $63,280 | $51,009 | $54,185 |
| WV | $60,140 | $48,630 | $54,171 |
| AL | $60,000 | $47,806 | $53,135 |
| SC | $60,840 | $49,347 | $52,960 |
| NY | $73,070 | $56,886 | $52,855 |
| MO | $59,870 | $48,409 | $52,755 |
| FL | $64,820 | $54,263 | $52,452 |
| AR | $55,640 | $45,287 | $52,350 |
| VA | $66,550 | $52,582 | $52,191 |
| AZ | $64,030 | $52,430 | $51,857 |
| GA | $62,420 | $49,819 | $51,519 |
| DE | $64,620 | $51,068 | $51,453 |
| IL | $64,270 | $50,784 | $51,373 |
| PA | $61,900 | $50,016 | $51,299 |
| OK | $56,120 | $45,248 | $51,251 |
| AK | $62,000 | $51,997 | $51,120 |
| MT | $57,090 | $46,125 | $51,112 |
| CO | $63,480 | $51,101 | $50,405 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of healthcare social workers earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $67,880.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for healthcare social workers, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is the District of Columbia, at $69,999.
- Levelling out prices for healthcare social workers is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Colorado sits at the bottom on $50,405.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for healthcare social workers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $67,880, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for healthcare social workers model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $69,999, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- The price deflation applied to healthcare social workers uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Colorado at $50,405. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Colorado anchors the bottom at $50,405 — and the two source series are dated independently.