1,250+ Social Services & Counseling Jobs in Washington, DC

Direct local government pay anchors are useful but lagged: BLS put the metro median for community and social service occupations at $68,290 in May 2023, and a later May 2025 regional release showed a mean hourly wage of $30.49 in the metro while noting Washington-region pay runs several dollars per hour above the national average for the occupation group. Current posting-based signals are somewhat higher, with local salary ranges centered on about $64k to $86k and hourly roles centered on about $30 to $46 / hour.

Full August 2026 market report

Advertised pay

Across the 1,039 openings that disclose pay, the advertised range midpoint runs $77,510 at the 25th percentile, $92,560 at the median and $107,375 at the 75th. These are advertised ranges, not earned pay.

Active openings as of September 25, 2026

Senior roles | Entry level | Remote | Posted this week

Live from the Callings.ai index of over 13 million postings, refreshed hourly and re-checked here nightly. Roles that close are dropped at the next refresh.

Showing 30 of 250+ openings.

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What our analysts see this month

Competitive market | next 3-6 months

This is a workable market, but not an easy one. The metro unemployment rate was 4.0% in July 2026, and Education and Health Services employment in the metro reached 491.1 thousand and was up 0.3679% year over year, which supports continued hiring in the settings where many social-service roles live. The problem is that the broader metro economy has been softer: Washington-Arlington-Alexandria lost 103,900 nonfarm jobs, a 3.1% decline, from January 2025 to January 2026. You should read this as a selective market with real openings, especially in health-linked and behavioral-health settings, but with employers able to be choosy.

Best positioned: The best odds right now go to candidates who can show case management, crisis intervention, documentation, and care-coordination experience, have social-work licensure or are close to it, and are open to mostly on-site work in healthcare-linked settings.

Main caution: The biggest misconception is assuming the DC area's nonprofit reputation means most openings sit in classic nonprofit settings; in the recent posting mix, about 45% of roles were in healthcare and another about 20% in hospitals and health care.

From the August 2026 market report

Who is hiring here

Counted across all 1,346 openings in this market. 10 of the employers below are hiring for more than one role right now.

1. MedStar Health: 49 open roles
2. Transformations Care Network: 39 open roles
3. LifeStance Health Inc.: 38 open roles
4. Ally Behavior: 36 open roles
5. Inova Health System, Inc.: 36 open roles
6. Novacare: 32 open roles
7. Johns Hopkins Medicine: 31 open roles
8. Blackbird Health: 28 open roles
9. Fox Rehab: 24 open roles
10. ATI Physical Therapy, Inc.: 18 open roles

Where the openings are

• Washington: 182
• Baltimore: 172
• Fairfax: 64
• Alexandria: 58
• Silver Spring: 52
• Rockville: 48
• Arlington: 45
• Falls Church: 38

Work arrangement

on-site 1,025 (79%), hybrid 161 (12%), remote 108 (8%)

Where the demand is

Real opportunity is concentrated much more heavily in healthcare-linked settings than many job seekers expect. In the recent local posting mix, about 45% of roles were in healthcare and another about 20% in hospitals and health care, compared with about 10% in education and about 5% in social services. That lines up with the most consistently active employers in the sample, which include MedStar Health, LifeBridge Health Inc, Inova, Luminis Health, Kaiser Permanente International, and Johns Hopkins Medicine. The skill mix also looks more operational than abstract. Case management appears in about 55% of postings, crisis intervention in about 25%, discharge planning in about 20%, and documentation, patient advocacy, care coordination, and clinical documentation around the mid-teens. A recent Kaiser Permanente inpatient social-work posting in Washington reinforced that pattern with hospital case management and on-site expectations. The second clear cluster is community behavioral health. Fairfax County's Community Services Board pointed to expansion in crisis stabilization and peer and recovery supports, and Ayuda's Washington posting showed continuing demand for bilingual, trauma-informed counseling tied to immigrant and refugee services. Remote counseling exists, but it is a minority lane: only about 10% of sampled postings were remote even with remote licensed counseling roles showing up locally.

• Hospital and integrated-care social work (high): This is the strongest visible lane, driven by health systems and inpatient or outpatient care teams where case management, discharge planning, documentation, and interdisciplinary coordination matter most.
• Community behavioral health, crisis, and recovery services (high): County and community-service settings are showing program expansion around crisis stabilization, peer supports, and recovery work, which favors applicants with crisis and community-care experience.
• Nonprofit family, immigrant, and community support organizations (moderate): These roles are present and can pay respectably, especially when bilingual or trauma-informed skills are involved, but they are a smaller slice of visible demand than hospital-linked work.
• Fully remote counseling (limited): Remote roles exist, especially for independently licensed clinicians, but they are only about 10% of the sampled market and should be treated as a secondary search lane, not the default plan.

Where to focus: Focus first on healthcare-linked case management and community behavioral-health roles, then treat pure nonprofit program jobs and fully remote counseling as secondary lanes.

Roles worth searching next

• Patient care coordinator or referral coordinator: Healthcare employers dominate the visible hiring mix, and the same documentation, advocacy, and care-coordination strengths transfer well.
• Utilization review or care management coordinator: This is a realistic pivot for people who are strong in discharge planning, documentation, and interdisciplinary workflow but do not yet have the exact title employers want.
• Licensed outpatient therapist or telehealth clinician: Remote and outpatient counseling openings exist in Washington, but they sit in the healthcare-practitioner lane and generally reward independent licensure more than broad community-service experience.
• Nonprofit program operations or grants coordinator: This fits candidates who like mission-driven work but want to lean more into reporting, compliance, scheduling, and cross-functional coordination than direct service.

What postings ask for

• Case management (table_stakes | immediate): It shows up in about 55% of recent local postings and is the clearest common denominator across hospital, behavioral-health, and community roles here. Who: Everyone in this category, especially entry and mid-career candidates.
• Crisis intervention (differentiator | immediate): Crisis intervention appears in about 25% of local postings, and recent local program expansion has centered on crisis stabilization and recovery supports. Who: Candidates targeting community behavioral health, addiction, youth, or county-service roles.
• Discharge planning and care coordination (premium | immediate): Discharge planning appears in about 20% of local postings and care coordination in about 15%, which is a strong signal that hospital and integrated-care workflows are rewarded. A recent Kaiser Permanente Washington posting was explicitly built around inpatient social-work case management. Who: Mid-career applicants and anyone aiming at hospital systems.
• Clinical documentation and interdisciplinary collaboration (table_stakes | immediate): Documentation, clinical documentation, and interdisciplinary collaboration all appear repeatedly in the local skill mix, which means employers are hiring for reliable execution as much as empathy. Who: All applicants, especially career switchers who need to prove they can work in regulated environments.
• LMSW or comparable social-work licensure readiness (differentiator | near-term): LMSW is the most commonly named certification in the local posting sample, and August 2026 brought a new ASWB social work licensing exam structure. Who: Recent graduates, supervised practitioners, and anyone getting filtered out before interview stage.
• Telehealth workflow and HIPAA-safe remote practice (differentiator | near-term): Remote roles are a minority locally, but the ones that do exist emphasize telehealth competency, independent licensure, and compliant remote delivery. Nationally, 94% of social workers offered virtual services by September 2025, so this has become normal practice rather than a niche add-on. Who: Counseling-oriented candidates and anyone who wants access to the limited remote slice of the market.

Questions about this market

What do Social Services, Counseling & Community roles pay in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV?

Direct local government pay anchors are useful but lagged: BLS put the metro median for community and social service occupations at $68,290 in May 2023, and a later May 2025 regional release showed a mean hourly wage of $30.49 in the metro while noting Washington-region pay runs several dollars per hour above the national average for the occupation group. Current posting-based signals are somewhat higher, with local salary ranges centered on about $64k to $86k and hourly roles centered on about $30 to $46 / hour. Pay is better than in many markets, but it does not go as far as outsiders assume. The metro cost-of-living index is 108.9, and the all-occupation average annual wage in the metro is $90,743, so many community-facing roles still sit below the area's broader wage standard.

Where is demand for Social Services, Counseling & Community roles in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV concentrated?

Real opportunity is concentrated much more heavily in healthcare-linked settings than many job seekers expect. In the recent local posting mix, about 45% of roles were in healthcare and another about 20% in hospitals and health care, compared with about 10% in education and about 5% in social services. That lines up with the most consistently active employers in the sample, which include MedStar Health, LifeBridge Health Inc, Inova, Luminis Health, Kaiser Permanente International, and Johns Hopkins Medicine. The skill mix also looks more operational than abstract. Case management appears in about 55% of postings, crisis intervention in about 25%, discharge planning in about 20%, and documentation, patient advocacy, care coordination, and clinical documentation around the mid-teens. A recent Kaiser Permanente inpatient social-work posting in Washington reinforced that pattern with hospital case management and on-site expectations. The second clear cluster is community behavioral health. Fairfax County's Community Services Board pointed to expansion in crisis stabilization and peer and recovery supports, and Ayuda's Washington posting showed continuing demand for bilingual, trauma-informed counseling tied to immigrant and refugee services. Remote counseling exists, but it is a minority lane: only about 10% of sampled postings were remote even with remote licensed counseling roles showing up locally.

Which employers are hiring the most Social Services, Counseling & Community talent in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV?

Recent postings show the most activity from MedStar Health (15 postings), LifeBridge Health Inc (15 postings), Counseling Center of Maryland (10 postings), Inova (10 postings), Luminis Health (10 postings). See the full market report for the complete employer landscape.

Can Social Services, Counseling & Community roles in Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV be done remotely?

Of recent postings, 10% are remote and 15% hybrid, with 75% on-site. Use the Remote filter above to see only remote openings.

How current are these listings?

Openings come from the Callings.ai live index of over 13 million jobs, refreshed hourly. This page searches postings from the last 30 days; run the search yourself to filter by anything else in plain language.

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