Careers in Psychology

Graduate and Postgraduate Students, Undergraduate Students June 4, 2018

Graduating with a degree in psychology? Check out what the data say about careers, workforce demographics, salaries and more!

Did you know that an estimated 3.4 million individuals in the United States hold a bachelor’s degree in psychology and that younger psychologists are more racially/ethnically diverse than older ones? The APA Center for Workforce Studies maintains a series of interactive data tools to answer these and other questions about the psychology workforce and education pipeline. Hold your mouse over the graphs and figures, and a box pops up with additional information.

elderly hand held by physican's

Undergraduate Students May 28, 2018

5 Steps to Jumpstart Your Career in Aging

Did you know that older adults (individuals 65 years of age and older) are the fastest growing segment of the U.S. population?

Did you know that in 2035, older adults are projected to outnumber kids for the first time in U.S. history?

Did you know that the Bureau of Labor Statistics just reported that the majority of the jobs that will have the most growth in the next 10 years are related to aging services?

There is a broad range of exciting and personally fulfilling career opportunities to work with this rapidly growing segment of the population. However, students seldom consider pursuing a specialization and career focused on adult development and aging.

Undergraduate Students, Undergraduate Teachers May 14, 2018

What can you do with a bachelor’s degree in psychology? Like this title, the actual answer is complicated

Stop me if you have already heard this one. Psychology is one of the most popular undergraduate majors in the U.S.; in the last year the data are available (2014-2015), 117,557 bachelor’s degrees in psychology were awarded. Said another way, in the past nine years, 1 million individuals received psychology baccalaureates (National Center for Education Statistics, 2017).

Pre K - 12 Teachers, Undergraduate Students, Undergraduate Teachers February 19, 2018

Environmental Psychology “In Action”: Understanding the dangers of noise to humans

Dr. Arline Bronzaft is worried about the effect noise could be having on your health. She’s an environmental psychologist whose research on the impact of noise in New York City has changed noise code policy and brought a lot of attention to the dangers of noise to humans. Her latest collaborative project with the Department of Environmental Protection of New York City is the Sound and Noise Education Module. This module provides interactive, multi-disciplinary, STEM lessons tailored to teach elementary, middle and high school students about sound and noise in their neighborhoods. Activities in each lesson encourage students and teachers to participate in citizen science projects by collecting and analyzing data.

Undergraduate Students May 8, 2017

A day in the Life of an Industrial Organizational Psychologist

On my annual family camping trip, I was out on the lake fishing with two of my brothers. We were making small talk as we were getting our lines ready to throw in the water.

“How’s work?”
“Good. Busy.”
“You? How’s work?”
“Same, busy.”

Then my brother asked a question that seemed almost comical, “Amanda, what do you do, anyway?” My other brother piped in curiously, “Yeah, what do you do??” The question came after I had been in my current position for a couple years, and I had been working as an I-O Psychology practitioner my whole career.

Undergraduate Students, Undergraduate Teachers April 17, 2017

Lighting the Way for Workplace-Bound Psychology Baccalaureates

As commencement approaches, our baccalaureate psychology graduates will likely hear the familiar admonition “But you can’t get a decent job with a bachelor’s degree in psychology!”  There is some truth to that warning (Carnevale, et al., 2015; Rajecki & Borden, 2011) and to employers’ complaints that graduates are unprepared for work. However, if we vigorously shared other data with our students we could instill optimism in the 55% of those graduates who enter the job market.

How can teachers and advisors help?

Graduate and Postgraduate Students, Undergraduate Students September 19, 2016

Location, location, location: what it’s like to be a licensed clinical psychologist in different parts of the United States

Have you ever wondered what the distribution of licensed psychologists looks like in the United States?

A recent report from the American Psychological Association’s Center for Workforce Studies examined data from state licensing boards of 50 states and Washington, D.C., from 2012-2015. This report presents a county-level look at the distribution of licensed psychologists in the United States.