There is more than meets the eye when it comes to being a marriage and family therapist. For example, did you know that they make an average of $22.1 an hour? That's $45,976 a year!
Between 2018 and 2028, the career is expected to grow 22% and produce 12,300 job opportunities across the U.S.
There are certain skills that many marriage and family therapists have in order to accomplish their responsibilities. By taking a look through resumes, we were able to narrow down the most common skills for a person in this position. We discovered that a lot of resumes listed listening skills, speaking skills and organizational skills.
When it comes to the most important skills required to be a marriage and family therapist, we found that a lot of resumes listed 15.4% of marriage and family therapists included treatment plans, while 12.4% of resumes included crisis intervention, and 10.7% of resumes included mental health. Hard skills like these are helpful to have when it comes to performing essential job responsibilities.
When it comes to searching for a job, many search for a key term or phrase. Instead, it might be more helpful to search by industry, as you might be missing jobs that you never thought about in industries that you didn't even think offered positions related to the marriage and family therapist job title. But what industry to start with? Most marriage and family therapists actually find jobs in the health care and non profits industries.
If you're interested in becoming a marriage and family therapist, one of the first things to consider is how much education you need. We've determined that 7.1% of marriage and family therapists have a bachelor's degree. In terms of higher education levels, we found that 85.3% of marriage and family therapists have master's degrees. Even though most marriage and family therapists have a college degree, it's impossible to become one with only a high school degree or GED.
Choosing the right major is always an important step when researching how to become a marriage and family therapist. When we researched the most common majors for a marriage and family therapist, we found that they most commonly earn master's degree degrees or bachelor's degree degrees. Other degrees that we often see on marriage and family therapist resumes include doctoral degree degrees or associate degree degrees.
You may find that experience in other jobs will help you become a marriage and family therapist. In fact, many marriage and family therapist jobs require experience in a role such as internship. Meanwhile, many marriage and family therapists also have previous career experience in roles such as therapist or counselor.
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the right jobs to get there.
In addition to switching up your job search, it might prove helpful to look at a career path for your specific job. Now, what's a career path you ask? Well, it's practically a map that shows how you might advance from one job title to another. Our career paths are especially detailed with salary changes. So, for example, if you started out with the role of clinician you might progress to a role such as case manager eventually. Later on in your career, you could end up with the title service program manager.
Tell us your goals and we'll match you with the rights job to get there.
Use Zippia's Salary Calculator to see how your pay matches up.
Designing and figuring out what to include on your resume can be tough, not to mention time-consuming. That's why we put together a guide that is designed to help you craft the perfect resume for becoming a Marriage And Family Therapist. If you're needing extra inspiration, take a look through our selection of templates that are specific to your job.
Learn How To Write a Marriage And Family Therapist Resume
At Zippia, we went through countless Marriage And Family Therapist resumes and compiled some information about how best to optimize them. Here are some suggestions based on what we found, divided by the individual sections of the resume itself.
View Detailed InformationLong Beach, CA • Public
New York, NY • Public
Philadelphia, PA • Private
Boston, MA • Private
New York, NY • Private
Chapel Hill, NC • Public
Evanston, IL • Private
Albany, NY • Public
San Jose, CA • Public
New York, NY • Private
The skills section on your resume can be almost as important as the experience section, so you want it to be an accurate portrayal of what you can do. Luckily, we've found all of the skills you'll need so even if you don't have these skills yet, you know what you need to work on. Out of all the resumes we looked through, 15.4% of marriage and family therapists listed treatment plans on their resume, but soft skills such as listening skills and speaking skills are important as well.
Some places are better than others when it comes to starting a career as a marriage and family therapist. The best states for people in this position are Alaska, New York, Arizona, and West Virginia. Marriage and family therapists make the most in Alaska with an average salary of $52,366. Whereas in New York and Arizona, they would average $51,974 and $50,006, respectively. While marriage and family therapists would only make an average of $49,701 in West Virginia, you would still make more there than in the rest of the country. We determined these as the best states based on job availability and pay. By finding the median salary, cost of living, and using the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Location Quotient, we narrowed down our list of states to these four.
1. Pennsylvania
$48,760
Avg. Salary
2. Rhode Island
$48,505
Avg. Salary
3. West Virginia
$49,702
Avg. Salary