Areas of psychology with the highest salaries

There are areas of psychology that pay more than 10,000 reais a month. You knew? Discover the areas with the best salaries.

Hello friends!

I remember that when I was in the third year of high school, I was in doubt between about 10 colleges. That’s why I went for Professional Guidance with a psychologist in my city. We were evaluating the options together and, because at the time I wasn’t thinking about teaching, I was between psychology and journalism.

And, after doing a specific technique of imagining the future, so to speak, the psychologist asked me if I thought I would earn well as a psychologist. Perhaps out of personal overconfidence and optimism, I immediately answered yes. But I realized that at the bottom of the question there was a value judgment: is it possible to earn a good salary after studying psychology at university?

At my overconfidence and the affirmative answer, we laughed. She was and is a successful professional and I was sure she would be.

But that hidden, elliptical, long-understood value judgment kept coming back to me. Already in college, I thought if I could earn well. As the years go by, we see colleagues graduating who entered earlier and we see their anguish to graduate. Not for finishing college (which turns out to be a relief and a victory) but for not knowing for sure what the professional future will be like. After all, there are no guarantees that it will work.

By email, I received this question: Which branch of psychology guarantees the highest salary?

Which branch of psychology guarantees the highest salary?

There are no guarantees. It might not work. Not only with psychology, but with any and all technical, technological, higher education courses. And it may not work out due to many factors: if the person didn’t choose well and didn’t like college, if they don’t have affinity with the areas of activity, if they live in a small town with little demand or if they live in a big city with a lot of competition , due to economic and market variations, accommodation, lack of focus, lack of confidence… and the list goes on.

When we go to buy a product in a store, we receive the guarantee with the invoice. A paper that guarantees that the product will last 1 year. There is the possibility to buy even an extended warranty.

However, when we finish and earn a degree, we do not receive a guarantee that demands professional success from the world. We have to know how to separate. The diploma represents the completion of the course. It means that the student passed the disciplines, did internships, tests, oral presentations – or whatever – and fulfilled what he had to accomplish in order to conclude. And that’s all.

From college desks to the job market there is a leap. We cannot take the diploma and shout to the market that it has to give us a job, a place in the sun, a high salary because, precisely, the diploma does not mean the guarantee.

Saying it this way seems obvious. However, it is not. Many have this feeling that the world owes them this success because they devoted themselves to higher education for 4, 5, 6 years.

The question is therefore quite simple: you will have a degree. But hundreds of thousands of people will also have the same degree. And all these hundreds of thousands of people will be your competitors.

According to the Federal Council of Psychology, the number of psychologists in Brazil exceeds 250,000 (two hundred and fifty thousand). Most are concentrated in São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio – and in the southern states. In the Midwest, Northeast and North states, competition is less.

Well, there are no guarantees. There is competition (more or less depending on the state). I say competition because it will be directly linked to remuneration.

If we think from a company point of view, if we are the owners, we will see that the employees are accounted for as costs. Every company aims to increase its profits, decreasing its costs and increasing its revenues, therefore making the difference between revenue and cost ever greater.

Therefore, we see private colleges dismissing professors with doctors and masters (higher cost) in order to hire more specialist professors. This is just an example.

Knowing the existence of several areas of psychology, see our text 7 best areas of psychology, and that we have the following specializations of titles by the CRP – clinical, traffic, hospital, neuropsychology, legal, school/educational, organizational and work, sport, social, psychomotricity and neuropsychology – the site reader’s question is: which one pays better?

Areas of psychology with the highest salaries

As far as I know, no research has been done that gives us exact numbers on the maximum values ​​for each area of ​​activity. I will give my answer based on my experience and according to the experience of my colleagues.

1) Clinical Psychology

The value of a month of work of a psychology professional in your office will vary according to three factors: consultation fee, number of clients and hours worked.

If the professional works for a health plan and earns 15 reais for a 1-hour consultation, works 8 hours a day and has 40 clients a week, he will earn 2,400. If you have 20 customers, you will earn 1,200. If you have 60 customers (and work on Saturdays) you will earn 3600.

The data is hypothetical, but it clearly shows us the relationship between number of clients, working time and consultation fee.

Just to show the opposite extreme: if the professional is recognized and charges 300 reais for a session and has 10 clients in a day, he will earn 3,000 reais in a single day.

That’s why I say that clinical psychology is the area that can most provide a high salary. Because even if this last professional attends 2 days a week, he will earn 24,000 reais per month. If you work every day and serve 10 customers each day, you could earn R$72,000.

I have already made this account in other texts and my colleagues say that this is almost impossible. That it would be necessary to be extremely famous, to work for the elite (after all, who can pay 300 reais per session?), to have many contacts, etc. In a way this criticism is correct. However, despite not representing what is most common, it shows that it is possible to earn more than 10,000 reais per month with a clinic. And to earn more than 10,000 is to be among the 1% of the population in Brazil that has the highest salaries.

2) Organizational Psychology – Human Resources

In 2003, when I was still in the beginning of college, and when the minimum wage was 280 reais, I met a psychology professional who was Director of Human Resources at a multinational. His salary at the time was 15,000 reais a month. The equivalent of 53 minimum wages!

Today, if his salary had risen following the minimum wage, he would be earning more than 41,000 reais.

In fact, it’s hard to know whether clinical psychology or organizational psychology offers the best salary. I put clinical psychology first because it is a liberal profession, which offers certain advantages. The HR professional depends on a company, the company for which he works. If this company has problems, he can lose his high pay.

If a client stops making appointments, the clinical psychologist will still have many other clients. But this is a personal view.

Coming back to the issue of salaries, I’m sure I’ll also hear criticism that HR doesn’t pay that well. Clear. It doesn’t pay well for entry-level positions, for interns and analysts. But for those who already have extensive experience and an exceptional curriculum, there will always be headhunters on their tail, offering opportunities and salaries of 10,000 upwards.

For those who like HR and have studied or continue to work in psychology, I suggest doing an MBA in Business Administration and being fluent in English.

3) Traffic Psychology

It is also possible to earn a lot of money as a traffic psychologist. However, you will need to be the owner of a clinic that is regularized with the Transit Bodies to offer the psychological test for candidates who want to get their driver’s license or renew it.

As each test is around 60, 70 reais and as it is possible to apply group tests, it is not difficult to imagine that the company’s profit certainly exceeds 10,000 reais. (I use the value of 10 thousand for what I said earlier, because it represents the 1% of those who earn more in our country).

4) Academic Psychology

Creating a research career, with a master’s, doctorate and postdoctoral degree is also a profitable option. A doctor professor who passes a public contest to teach at a public university initially earns more than 7,000 reais per month.

With benefits and accumulation of years at home or other administrative positions, the salary may reach 12,000 or, in special cases, for full professors, the value rises much more. It was recently reported that a professor at the Institute of Psychology at USP earns R$ 60,248.38.

But again, this last value is rare. The most common is that it rotates between 7 to 12 thousand per month. Professors at private universities can also earn well, as long as they have an excellent education.

Conclusion

In each and every profession we find professionals who earn the minimum and those who earn amounts that would be considered astronomical among their peers.

Remembering average salaries:

Starting salary – R$ 1.2 thousand to R$ 1.7 thousand.

Intermediate salary – R$ 2,000 to R$ 5,000.

Senior salary – R$5,000 to R$20,000.

Finally, I would like to remind you that from time to time there are contests with very good salaries. See here – How much is the psychology salary in public tenders?

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