New York Social Worker Jobs and Salary Guide

There’s one thing you should get clear about right away:

A career in social work in New York state isn’t just a job. It’s a calling, and it’s a commitment to a mission.

That means you aren’t getting paid for marching across the Brooklyn Bridge to protest the latest episode of police brutality uncorked by NYPD—but you’ll do it because you want to give voice to the fight for justice…

It means you’ll carry Naloxone around all the time and stop and check anyone passed out in a doorway at any time, because they are people and deserve life….

It means you’ll lay awake thinking of placement options for the latest foster care case to land on your desk, even though you are off the clock, because every child deserves a chance.

You’re setting yourself up here for a full-on vocation. It’s a career where you can dedicate yourself to making lives better… and then see it actually happen, one person and one family at a time.

There’s no better thing to do with your life and no better place to do it than New York.

MSW Jobs vs BSW Jobs: Licensed Social Worker Careers in New York Versus Jobs With a BSW but No License

New York has a simple and straightforward two-tier licensing structure for social workers:

All clinical and master social workers must hold a state-issued license…
Being eligible for a license starts with a Master of Social Work degree…
That MSW makes you eligible for the entry-level LMSW (Licensed Master Social Worker) license…
After three years of supervised practice as an LMSW, you can go for the LCSW (Licensed Clinical Social Worker) license.

Many social work positions in the state will accept applicants with either license. In New York, the only real difference between an LMSW and LCSW is that an LMSW has to work under the general supervision of an LCSW. Otherwise, they can perform all the same clinical work… and often do.

So when it comes down to it, the biggest divide among jobs in the field is between licensed social work jobs that require an MSW and those that don’t require a license:

Only clinical practice (defined as diagnosis, psychotherapy, and assessment-based treatment planning) requires a license; a license requires an MSW.
So anyone with only a BSW is going to be hunting for non-clinical community- and program-focused positions only.
An MSW and a license definitely doesn’t limit you to clinical roles, it only expands your ability to provide direct person-centered interventions.

BSW Jobs in New York Offer a Stepping-Stone and a Career Path

BSW jobs are easy to identify due to their lack of license requirements. Just because they are unlicensed, however, doesn’t mean these jobs aren’t important or that earning a BSW or other human services related bachelor’s isn’t a rigorous process.

If BSW graduates can’t get licensed to practice in New York, you may wonder why the degree is so popular here.

There’s a two-part answer to that question: With a BSW you become job-ready while also becoming eligible for the advanced-standing Master of Social Work degree.

An advanced-standing MSW program grants you an MSW, only faster — as little as one year rather than two. But you need a BSW from a CSWE (Council on Social Work Education)-accredited program to be eligible. That means a BSW cuts a year off your MSW, and gets you license-ready that much faster. It’s the big reason most future New York social workers go for a Bachelor of Social Work rather than other human services degrees.
Becoming job-ready with a BSW opens up a lot of possibilities in the broader field of behavioral health/human services..It’s even possible for BSW graduates to engage in some non-clinical master social work tasks, but only under the supervision of an LCSW or LMSW. A bachelor’s in social work even meets the qualifications for certain licensed roles outside of social work, such as the CASAC (Credentialed Alcoholism and Substance Abuse Counselor).

Social Work Job Descriptions Cover All of Society’s Biggest Challenges… And You’ll Find Every One of Them Here in New York

Social work history here is deep and the accomplishments of New York social workers are epic in the field and known around the world. It’s not just the foundational education programs and groundbreaking innovations like Bellevue, the first public hospital in the United States; it’s the legacy of legends like James Russell Dumpson, the first social worker to serve as Welfare Commissioner of NYC and the only Black commissioner in the country at the time.

There is an infinite variety of social ills, most of which can be found within a four-block radius of Livonia and Rockaway on any given night… and there’s twice as many ways to start solving them. Social workers in New York were the first to use settlement houses to deal with societal growing pains under industrialization. And in the generations since, they’ve continued in that spirit with innovative outreach efforts around activities as diverse as basketball and chess, building connections and a sense of possibility within marginalized communities.

This puts many types of social work careers on the table. A social work career born in New York can put you through so many episodes and life-changing experiences that if you kept score of it all your resume would be a mile long. There are so many options and so many needs that it’s easy to take on new challenges and explore new areas of practice with every year that passes.

As diverse and varied as they may be, the overall pattern to these jobs is as consistent as a heartbeat:

Assess the needs or issues facing individuals, families, or communities
Analyze those problems with the expertise of a strong social work education
Identify resources and avenues for assistance
Develop plans and create opportunities for solutions
Counsel, manage the situation, and assess progress over time
Create ways for the system to prevent or mitigate similar problems in the future

It’s that last one that fully engages what social work careers in New York are about. It’s not just about addressing the immediate need, or fixing the problem of right now. It’s about doing all that plus leaving the world a safer, better, and healthier place for the next generation.

New York Social Worker Careers Are Shaped by Specializations

The specialty you choose to master in the field has a big impact on your daily experiences as a New York social worker.

Maybe you’re working with children from Fort Drum who are dealing with the stress and dislocation that comes from having a parent on deployment for long periods. Maybe you spend your days organizing and leading recovery sessions for substance use disorder patients in the cold, stony halls of Attica. Maybe you’re putting together briefings for UN committees exploring ways to end world hunger.

Those daily experiences are quite different, and your path to them depends on the choices you make in degree concentrations and post-graduate certificate studies. With a high degree of specialization in so many fields, jobs lean on expertise you build in the educational process.

Social work roles available in New York include, but aren’t limited to, these kinds of roles:

Social Work Case Management
Geriatric Social Work
Youth Social Work
Child Welfare Social Work
Adoption Agency Social Work
Forensic Social Work
Crisis Social Work
Medical Social Work
Homeless Social Work
Hospice Social Work
Immigration Social Work
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Work
School Social Work
Military Social Work
Social Justice Social Work

There’s a mixture of micro, macro, and mezzo work in each of those types of social work jobs. In some cases, like crisis care, they will mostly be devoted to clinical work; for others, such as criminal justice social work jobs, it’s not unusual to find all different level of duties all wrapped up in one position.

But one thing you’ll have to be clear about is this: all careers in social work in New York will depend on your level of education, and whether you’re licensed.

Some Say the Best Careers in Social Work are Ones that Involve Giving People Opportunities

The people who made social work the field it is today didn’t have a list of different helpful roles to choose from. They saw a need and went out and made their own roles… and made a whole new profession while they were at it.

Not surprisingly, many of the innovators in the field have been from New York. And while there’s plenty of formalities in social services today, the beating heart of innovation is still alive and well in NYC social work jobs, too.

That leads to efforts like Greyston Bakery in Yonkers. Established in 1982 to offer employment to individuals who otherwise face barriers to employment, the bakery hires with no background check, no resumes, and no interviews.

The organization has since branched out into workforce development programs to extend its reach even beyond direct employees. The goal now is to offer employment opportunities to at least 40,000 people by 2030… and they’re on track to make it happen.

With a master of social work and a bright idea, you can go a long way in New York to making better lives. And in ways you may not have even thought of yet.

New York Social Work Jobs Can Involve Focusing Your Efforts at the Individual-Level (Micro), Program-Level (Mezzo) or Community-Level (Macro)

Something that everyone going into social work runs into almost immediately is people talking about macro, micro, and mezzo social work jobs. Every specialty area of practice in the list above, and many more, has roles at the macro, micro, and mezzo levels.

What’s the difference, and how does the kind of work you want to do fit in?

Micro social work is mostly what you think about when you think of what social workers do: direct engagement with individuals and families to help them deal with acute and immediate problems. It’s the kind of practice that social work licenses are designed to regulate. That means it covers the core piece of what defines clinical practice – the ability to diagnose, develop treatment plans, and provide counseling.

Mezzo social work happens at one step back from direct clinical assistance. These are roles that enable micro-level work by building organizational connections, developing services for communities, and operating at the programmatic level of assistance. You might interact with clients regularly, but in a capacity that’s more administrative than clinical.

Macro social work is true big-picture social services work that takes social workers to the halls of state legislature, and even the halls of congress. This is the kind of advocacy, policy development, research, and administration that can impact services for not only individuals and communities, but even the whole state or country. Real leadership in social services often happens at the macro level.

Social work jobs with clinical duties will always fall into the micro category; those without direct client contact or clinical assistance will usually be in the macro or mezzo roles.

It’s not unusual for clinical practitioners in micro roles to eventually move up to more big-picture macro practice, or to handle some macro and mezzo types of work as part of their duties. The opposite isn’t true—macro and mezzo roles that aren’t licensed have to stay in their lanes.

All of these roles are critical and can be as specialized as any of the population-focused practice areas.

At the Macro-Level, Social Work Jobs Aim To Change the Lives of Millions of People at Once

Many clinical social workers drill down into the details. It’s a big success to get a single client into substance abuse therapy; placing a whole family in new housing might be worth throwing a party.

But in places of power, a few strokes of the pen can change policy for thousands or even millions of people at once. If big-picture social welfare and human services issues interest you, then you are in the right place for macro social work jobs in New York.

New York social workers like Frances Perkins, who went on to become the first female Secretary of Labor under Franklin Roosevelt, have a history of making things happen at the highest levels of American politics.

Home of the United Nations as well as important national and international social justice organizations like the Center for Reproductive Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union, a lot of the thought and drive behind new trends in social work happen here.

Jobs in macro practice may have titles like:

Police and Research Analyst
Community Educators
School-Based Early Support Program Director
Victims Advocate
National Organizing Director
Housing Justice Policy Manager
Senior Advocacy and Campaign Strategist

What these roles lack in direct client contact, they make up for in swing-for-the-fences energy. If you can strategize like a chess hustler and have the self-confidence to put your ideas forward, you can make major differences that will cascade down to people in the streets… and around the country.

A Career at the Mezzo-Level Lets You Improve How Social Work Gets Done in New York

There’s no getting around the fact that there is a lot of bureaucracy in the human services field. Nowhere is that more true than in New York, where a patchwork of overlapping and sometimes conflicting social service agencies has been piling up roughly since Washington lost the Battle of Long Island.

New York is a place where you have to put down the make and model of your car to get food stamps. Every social worker here has a funny but tragic story to tell of getting passed in a complete circle through various assistance agency phone trees. It’s a system where it’s simply impossible for average people in need to get those needs taken care of by themselves.

With the largest city in the country and a more diverse population than many entire nations, there is a lot of friction to overcome in New York social services.

Mezzo social work jobs are the grease that makes the whole big machine go. These are the folks who know the ins and outs of the system and can connect people with the services they need.

Human Services Specialist
Volunteer and Events Coordinator
Case Manager
Case Planner
Family Worker
Social Work Assistant
After-School Activity Specialist
Environmental Organizer
Voter Registration Field Organizer

These roles may involve client contact, but not in a therapeutic role. Instead, they come down to information gathering, customer service, or intake and processing tasks. That doesn’t make them, or the social work education that you have gotten, any less important. Sometimes helping someone file the right form in the right way can make the difference in gaining access to things as fundamental to life as housing, food assistance, education, and healthcare.

Micro-Level Licensed Clinical Social Worker Jobs Open up Patient Therapy Roles in New York

The heavy hitters for master’s in social work careers in New York are clinical practice jobs: the kind of positions that LCSW and LMSW credentials qualify you for. These are the destination for most MSW graduates here, and the ones that offer a shot at making the biggest differences in individual lives.

Far and away the most common job title for micro-level social workers in New York is simply Licensed Clinical Social Worker.

But you will find similar positions with other titles as well, depending on specializations:

And you might qualify for jobs that aren’t strictly social work: positions as counselors, as case managers, as trainers in various behavioral and social services agencies can be open to both professional counselors, psychologists, therapists, and social workers.

Of course, there is plenty of room to move up the career ladder, too. With experience, you may qualify for roles like:

With a license, you can take on micro, mezzo, and macro work without limit. You’ll be better informed and have more weight when it comes to the last two roles. When it comes to clinical services, however, you will simply have no equals.

This can mean delivering direct psychotherapy to clients, conducting assessments and evaluations, or making referrals to more specialized mental health or therapy providers. The art of clinical social work often revolves around triaging problems so you take care of the most immediate needs and get more specific help for anything that can wait.

It’s work that will keep anyone on their toes, but there’s nothing more satisfying than getting a client through a crisis.

State and Municipal Organizations, Private Nonprofits, and Federal Agencies All Need to Fill Social Work Jobs in New York

According to CauseIQ, a directory of non-profit organizations in the United States, there are more than 8,300 human service organizations located throughout New York state.

Of the over 325,000 people they employ, the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that almost 62,000 are social workers.

You can find employers of all shapes, sizes, and with commitments to different missions in a state as diverse as New York. Behemoths like CARES, the Community Assistance Resources and Extended Services program chug away with nearly half a million a year to put toward kids and adults with developmental disabilities. Then there are the spirited startups with barely a dozen staff like Girls Write Now, lasered in on a niche and powered by sheer commitment.

The social work job you are born to fill is out there somewhere… even if you have to make it yourself.

Like every state, though, the government is a major source of jobs in social work. BLS data shows that federal, state, and local government agencies represent the largest single chunk of social work jobs in the state. Within that, local government is the biggest employer, likely because of its role in hiring for school social worker jobs. But there are plenty of roles at the state level in the criminal justice, employment, and foster care systems for social workers.

Your Career Options Aren’t Limited to Your Neighborhood… You Can Even Find Remote Jobs as a New York Social Worker

In a field where direct person-to-person contact has been considered a holy grail since the days of Hull House and other neighborhood outreach efforts, the very idea of remote jobs might seem crazy.

But there are many careers for social work degree graduates that don’t necessarily involve a lot of direct contact. And new advances in technology have made it possible to handle even traditional clinical social worker jobs without knocking on doors or bringing clients into the office.

Even in a compact place like New York City, the advantages are clear. Plenty of geriatric social work patients have problems getting around to appointments. Busy foster families can’t always be in the same place as a social worker when both have times for meetings.

Zoom and other technologies were honed over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic and used extensively to reduce risk to both social workers and patients. They worked well enough that it’s not uncommon to see all kinds of social work jobs offered remotely today.

Travel social work jobs are somewhat related to this. With demand high everywhere, you won’t need to stay too close to home, although you will need to practice in places within the state where your license is good.

Of course, where you work has a big impact on what your job is like, too. A job at a tiny start-up social justice nonprofit may have a lot of stress but a lot of flexibility; you can be hand-lettering signs for a protest in the morning, meeting with legislators at lunch, and interviewing victims to hear their stories just before dinner.

Government roles, on the other hand, may be more 9 to 5. And various nonprofits each come with their own work environment and priorities.

The Pay-off in Social Work Jobs Involves More Than Just Healthy Paychecks

Most of your payout as a social worker is going to have to be in job satisfaction. For many New York social workers, the career helping others is its own reward. You do what you do because it’s needed, not because it’s lucrative.

But there are many agencies or organizations that realize that it’s important for reasons of equity and social justice to pay social workers a fair value for their time and commitment. That’s particularly true here in New York, with some of the highest costs of living in the country.

You will find that social work salaries in New York beat the national averages in every category.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) is the government agency that keeps the records for salary and employment data for American jobs. The bureau actually breaks social work jobs out into four different categories, and keeps average salary data for each of them.

For 2023, those averages in New York state came out to:

Of course, it’s also true that there are plenty of different salaries within each of those categories based on the type of employer, level of education and experience, and the location of the job within the state.

You can find all that and much, much more information about social workers salaries on our salary page here.

While the world may not put a high financial value on the work, you’ll know exactly how valuable you are every day on the job as a social worker. Your clients will let you know it; your heart will tell you what’s right and true. And every day, both New York and the world will be a little bit better with you on the job.

2023 US Bureau of Labor Statistics salary and employment figures for Social Workers reflect state data, not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Data accessed April 2024.