Counseling as a Second Career: What to Know Before You Leap

If you’re sitting with the idea of counseling as a second career (or maybe even a third or fourth one), there’s a lot to consider. As a faculty member in a clinical mental health counseling program for the past 10 years, I’ve watched hundreds of students come through our doors from every walk of life imaginable. Former teachers, retired military, lawyers, tech leaders, accountants, and other corporate world moguls.

The majority of our student body did not arrive fresh out of undergrad; they're older adults, mid-life and beyond, chasing a second or third act as mental health counselors. So if you decide to move forward, know that you’ll be in good company.

I vividly remember the first time a prospective student explained why he was ready to leave the corporate world. He had realized that, despite huge financial benefits and a commitment of two decades, the job provided little in the way of personal satisfaction. He wanted to feel like he was doing something meaningful with his life. Always curious about a career in counseling, he was finally allowing himself to pursue it.

I thought, wow, what a powerful pivot for a person to make later in life. Since then, I’ve heard countless similar stories. Turns out, he wasn’t the exception, he was the norm.

I’ve come to believe that counseling draws a specific type of person — adults who are wrestling with big, existential questions. “Why have I always been the person everyone comes to for advice?” “What could I be doing to bring more meaning into my life?” Most say they always wanted to work in mental health , but they made choices in their twenties to support a certain kind of future (e.g., rent, kids, a 401k).

Now their 40s, 50s, or 60s, they see life from the perspective of experience. And they’ve learned that mental health can be even more valuable than financial wealth.

Is becoming a counselor worth it?

Let’s talk numbers, because they paint a pretty clear picture of the demand for counselors, how much they make on average, and why this is such a worthwhile career.

First off all, counselors continue to be in very high demand:

• The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects employment for substance abuse, behavioral disorder, and mental health counselors to grow 17% from 2024 to 2034 (much faster than the 3% average across all occupations).
• About 48,000 job openings for counselors are expected each year (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025).
• SAMHSA has projected the country would fall short by about 31,000 full-time mental health practitioners, a gap that shows little sign of closing (National Council for Mental Wellbeing, 2023).

Demand remains high because Americans are struggling with mental health in greater numbers than ever before.

• In 2024, roughly 62 million U.S. adults (about 23%) lived with a mental illness, and nearly half of them received no treatment (Health Resources and Services Administration, 2025).
• CDC data from 2024 show about 1 in 5 U.S. adults has been told by a professional they had an anxiety or depressive disorder (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2025).
• Symptoms have been trending up, as anxiety symptoms in adults rose from 15.6% to 18.2%, and depression symptoms from 18.5% to 21.4%, between 2019 and 2022 (Terlizzi & Zablotsky, 2024).

When people ask whether entering this field is “worth it,” I point to the statistics above, rather than the promise of a great salary. The median annual wage for counselors was $59,190 in May 2024 (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2025). In my experience, counselors who make significantly more tend to diversify their income by offering services beyond 1:1 care.

What does it take to become a second-career counselor?

Two organizations shape the path to becoming a counselor. The American Counseling Association drives our ethical code (American Counseling Association, 2014). And the Council for Accreditation of Counseling and Related Educational Programs (CACREP) largely determines how counselors are trained.

To become a licensed counselor, you’ll need to:

• Earn a master’s degree (typically 60 semester credits)
• Complete a supervised practicum and internship
• Provide a significant number of hours of closely supervised care
• Pass a licensure exam

All in all, it’s a few years of real, intensive effort. Most states will require about 1.5-3 years of post-graduation work in addition to passing an exam before you can be licensed. For example, Pennsylvania requires 3000 post-graduation supervised hours and passing the National Counselor Examination (NCE).

The internship year, especially, can be humbling, as you’ll sit with clients before you feel ready, because nobody ever feels fully ready (that’s imposter syndrome, which you’ve likely overcome at some point in the past).

It’s also important to note that burnout is common in this field, especially for those who have a desire to be a change agent at more than an individual level. Or if you are working in an area where counselors are hard to find and your caseload is overwhelming. While these might feel like deterrents, I hope you see them as reasons to go in clear-eyed, build your self-care practices early, and choose a program and a first job that takes counselor wellness seriously.

An important lesson my best students learn fast: you cannot pour from an empty cup, and you are not the exception to that rule.

Can I study to become a counselor without quitting my full-time job?

The good news is that a growing number of programs are designed for people who already have jobs, kids, mortgages, and lives that don’t pause for grad school.

Online, hybrid, weekend, and part-time formats have improved dramatically, and many are CACREP-accredited rather than corner-cutting. These adjustable formats enable working adults to keep earning a paycheck while they train, which can transform whether a career change is even possible.

Telehealth has also reshaped the work itself; The Counseling Compact, an interstate agreement, is expanding licensed counselors’ ability to serve clients across participating state lines, which enhances both access for clients and flexibility for you.

A quick note on cultural humility as key to success

With 2024 revisions, accredited programs are now expected to weave social justice, advocacy, and culturally sustaining practice across courses rather than quarantining them into a single “diversity” class (CACREP, 2024). Essentially, cultural humility has become core to the counseling profession.

This shift will change your experience as a student. It means the program you enter will ask you to explore your own identity, assumptions, and blind spots as part of your clinical training. You’ll be expected to develop self-awareness as a skill.

Chances are, if you are seeking a new career as a counselor, you’re more than ready for this kind of self-exploration. Students arriving in a counseling program are, in most cases, motivated by change. They want to be part of something larger than what their previous career offered the world, or offered them. That desire is a decent predictor of who’ll make it through the harder stretches.

Counseling is a calling and a career

If you’ve gotten this far, some part of you already knows if counseling will be right for you. People rarely research a counseling career out of idle curiosity, they do it because something keeps pulling them in this direction.

The training is demanding, the pay won’t fund fancy vacations, and the work will almost surely ask more of you than your last career did. But for the right person (e.g., someone who's been the listener, the steady one, the one who always wondered what they were meant to do) it’s a genuinely meaningful way to spend a working life. The field needs you. People struggling with their mental health need help.

I won’t speak for all counselor educators, but it gives me so much joy knowing that the students I work with go out into the world doing something they truly love, no matter if it took them 50 years and three careers to find that path.