The Datum Report

Occupation 3224 · Associate professional occupations

Counsellors

Half of full-time counsellors in the UK earn more than £31,124 a year, and half earn less.

Counsellors provide counselling services to clients with a wide variety of problems by means of assisting them to reach their own resolutions to the difficulties they face. Counsellors may specialise in a particular area or client group or address a wide range of issues.

How people enter it

There are no formal qualifications requirements for entry but relevant experience is necessary. Many employers will expect entrants to have achieved or be working towards accreditation with a professional body via certification or a diploma in counselling. Background checks including a DBS check are likely to be required for counsellors working with vulnerable adults and/or families.

What the work involves

• meets clients face-to-face, working either one-to-one or with couples or families, or by telephone or internet
• encourages clients to discuss their feelings in relation to their problems, aiming to ensure that an understanding of the issues is achieved
• presents different perspectives to the problem areas identified
• refers to other appropriate sources of help
• keeps accurate and confidential records

Also called

Counsellor (welfare services) · Debt adviser · Drugs and alcohol worker · Life coach · Stop smoking counsellor

What it pays

How pay has changed

Median gross annual pay for counsellors, full-time employees, 2023 to 2025. Each point is that year's ASHE April snapshot as published — revisions are not backfilled into earlier years, and a year ONS withheld is a gap rather than a joined line.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Year-on-year change

The change from each year to the next, in per cent, computed from the figures in the chart above — so the two cannot disagree.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Table

Pay by region

Median gross annual pay for full-time employees, ranked, against the UK figure. 7 of 11 regions are published: ONS withholds a cell where the survey sample cannot support it, and those are shown as gaps rather than dropped — an absent region is not a region without the work in it.

ONS, ASHE Table 14 - occupation by four-digit SOC (national). Period 2025. Table

Every regional figure

ONS does not publish occupational pay below region. Cells the survey could not support are shown as withheld, with its reason — adding a region split to a specific occupation leaves roughly a tenth of cells publishable.

Common questions

Classified alongside this

Child and early years officers · Housing officers · Welfare and housing associate professionals n.e.c. · Youth and community workers