Article archive / January 1, 2012
Originally published: . Volume 3, No. 5. Source pages: 11.
On November 8, 2011 the popular Internet news blog, The Huffington Post, published an article on unemployment rates for different college majors and listed clinical psychology as having a top unemployment rate of 19.5 percent.
The article was titled, “The 11 Majors with the Highest Unemployment Rates,” and wrote “It's hard out there for aspiring Sigmund Freuds.” They also listed four other categories of psychology, including IO and educational psychology, as among the highest unemployment groups. The story was picked up by National Public Radio and aired the next day.
The reports were incorrect. The first error was that the information came from self-reports for undergraduate college majors, obtained in the American Community Survey collected during the Census, and not for occupations such as clinical psychology. The information was reported in a table form in the Wall Street Journal and given in a Georgetown University report.
The second mistake was that most of the data was based on very small samples. The category for “Clinical Psychology” was ranked 168 out of 173 majors, with .7 of one percent of the sample. On the other hand, the college major of “Psychology” was ranked as the 5th category. This major had an unemployment rate of 6.1 percent which was similar to other college majors.
On November 14, APA published a press release attempting to clarify some of the misleading statements in the NPR report. APA noted the unemployment rate for clinical psychologists is 3.8 percent.
According to the Occupational Information Network (O*Net) a primary national source for occupational information developed under the sponsorship of the US Department of Labor, the national outlook for clinical and school psychology is 7 to 13 percent projected growth through 2018, which is about average. Neuropsychologists and Clinical Neuropsychologists have a bright outlook, with a projected growth rate of faster than average, at a 14 to 19 percent growth rate.
Industrial-Organizational Psychology has a projected growth that is over 20 percent, and much faster than average. Psychiatrists also have a much faster than average projected growth, which could be related to prescribing psychologists, with a greater than 20 percent growth rate.
In Louisiana the wages for clinical, counseling, and school are about equal to national averages.
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