Mental health counselors lead the list with 18.4% projected growth through 2032, per Projections Central. Clinical and counseling psychologists follow at 11.4%. School psychology is also expanding, and industrial-organizational psychology projects at 5%. If hiring volume matters to your specialty decision, counseling and clinical work are where the openings concentrate.
If you want to know which psychology specialties actually have jobs waiting — not just “psychology is growing” as a vague reassurance, but specific numbers from a real data source — the Bureau of Labor Statistics and Projections Central breaks it down by occupation. Here’s what those numbers say.
Which Psychology Fields Are Growing the Fastest?
Four psychology and counseling specialties appear in Projections Central’s national employment forecasts. Here’s where each one stands for the 2022–2032 projection window.
Mental health counselors sit at the top of the list. The official BLS category — Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors — is projected to grow 18.4% between 2022 and 2032, with roughly 42,000 job openings expected each year. Most of these roles are master’s-level positions in community mental health centers, outpatient clinics, hospitals, and private practice. That’s substantially faster than the average across all occupations. BLS attributes projected growth to increasing demand for behavioral health services, alongside broader trends such as expanded access to care and greater public awareness of mental health.
Clinical and counseling psychologists come in at 11.4% projected growth over the same period, with about 4,100 annual openings. That’s the doctoral track — licensed psychologists who assess and diagnose, carry primary accountability for treatment planning, and can administer the full range of psychological tests. 11.4% is fast growth for a doctoral-level occupation, driven by sustained demand in healthcare settings, schools, and independent practice.
School psychologists work in K-12 settings, supporting students with learning disabilities, mental health challenges, and behavioral concerns. The BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook identifies the field as growing, though Projections Central does not publish a separate national projection figure for school psychologists specifically. If this is the specialty you’re considering, browsing school psychology programs by state alongside local projections will give you a more accurate picture for wherever you plan to work.
Industrial-organizational psychologists project at 5% growth through 2032 — slower than clinical work in percentage terms, but the field is much smaller to begin with. I-O psychologists apply behavioral research in corporate environments: hiring, team dynamics, productivity, and organizational design. The median salary for this specialty ranks it among the highest-earning psychology occupations in the BLS data.
Is Psychology a Growing Field Overall?
Yes — across the board, psychology and counseling occupations are projected to add jobs between 2022 and 2032. The growth isn’t uniform, though. Counseling roles are growing fastest in raw numbers because there are far more of them: nearly half a million mental health counselors in the current workforce, compared to about 76,000 clinical and counseling psychologists. The counseling side adds tens of thousands of openings per year; the psychologist side adds thousands.
The driver is consistent across all these specialties: increasing demand for behavioral healthcare, more employer and insurer coverage, and broader public comfort with seeking mental health treatment. Those trends have been pushing these projections upward for the better part of a decade, and nothing in the current data suggests a reversal.
If you’re early in deciding between a master’s-level counseling path and a doctoral psychology path, the job market data alone won’t make the decision for you — but it does clarify the scale difference. Counseling has volume. Clinical psychology has a scope of practice. Both are growing.
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2025 US Bureau of Labor Statistics salary data and Projections Central 2022-2032 job growth forecasts for Psychologists (including Clinical & Counseling, Industrial-Organizational, and School Psychologists) and Substance Abuse, Behavioral Disorder, and Mental Health Counselors, reflect state and national data, not school-specific information. Conditions in your area may vary. Data accessed June 2026.