Employment Outlook
Counsellor
Average wage for
Employment Levels
Around 25,900 people are currently employed as Counsellors in Australia. This is set to increase to 30,500 people by 2023, according to the Department of Employment.
Employment by State
34.3% of all Counsellors are employed in NSW. The area with the lowest number of Counsellors is TAS, with only 1.6%.
Gender Split
This is a very female dominated industry with 22.9% of Counsellors being male and 77.1% being females.
Age Brackets
The most popular age for people working as Counsellors is 45-54 years old, with 28.6%. A small percentage (11.7%) of people get into this career path older, aged 65 and over. There is also a number of people who enjoy a career as Counsellors, with 21.7% aged 35-44.
Hours Worked
Full-time Counsellor workers spend around 36.3 hours per week at work as compared to the all jobs average of 40 hours.
(Source: ABS Labour Force Survey, Department of Jobs and Small Business trend data to May 2018 and Department of Jobs and Small Business projections to 2023.)
Education Level
The majority of Counsellors have a Bachelor Degree (46.3%) or are at Post Graduate /Graduate Diploma or Graduate Certificate (35.6%).
(Skill level requirements can change over time, the qualifications needed by new workers might be different from the qualifications of workers already in the job)
Counsellor Duties & Tasks
- Meet with clients and discuss their issues or worries
- Set goals for client to work towards
- Help client to maintain their goals on an ongoing basis
- Administration work, keeping notes on each client and session
*The information provided on this page is from the Department of Employment’s Job Outlook website. All salary ranges are from Payscale. Where jobs are not exact matches, job areas have been used. This information is to be used as a guide only.
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