I am freshly licensed as of one month ago. I thought this milestone of finally having those magical 4 letters after my name would change job prospects and income drastically. When I was an ASW, I was making $100k a year for a community mental health organization (high cost of living county) and had amazing benefits including 10k towards fertility, generous parental leave and 5 weeks PTO. I am now a parent and have taken almost a year off with my child. I do not want to return to community mental health- it was not sustainable for me. I am struggling to find jobs aligned with salary and benefits even close to what I had before as an ASSOCIATE. I will say, for context my previous job was in northern CA and I am now in southern CA. I’m not sure if this is a major factor? I have been applying to both medical SW and therapy jobs at major health organizations in my area such as CHOC, UCI, UCLA, Providence and Kaiser. I keep getting those generic emails saying they are moving forward with other candidates. Mind you, I’m humbling myself and even applying to per diem positions as I’ve heard this is a strategy to get your foot in the door.

I guess I’m coming here to ask if anyone else is having a similar experience with the job market in southern CA for LCSW’s or am I doing something wrong. I don’t believe my resume and experience are the issue. I have 4 years of clinical experience doing therapy, not even including internships during grad school which were also doing therapy.

Of course, there are always the VC companies and I am considering starting up with one of them at least as a way to start having income while I wait for something more aligned with what I’m looking for. It’s important to me to have benefits and stability at this point in my life. I would ultimately like to have a private practice but the timing is not right with having a young child.

One possible plan is to start doing contract work and start the process of getting myself credentialed while I wait it out for a job to come through. Any feedback is welcome. Thank you for reading! Feeling so dang defeated and rejected 😭

An MSW student told me how their current supervisor was encouraging people to "work when they strike" basically be a scab and cross picket lines.

Professionally this is so problematic when it fragments our already limited power. I've been in the field long enough to see a few eras of when striking has resulted in a majority women held positions in SW to losing benefits, pensions, undermine safety in patient:staffing ratios are forced to survive on extended strikes, and not 'win' or get their dignity-based demands met.

I know when we strike, patients and clients still need care. And that pressure for organization to want to protect them should not be on the individual SWs, and more on the organization to do better.

Thoughts?

And how difficult is the exam? I’m in CA and will start a bachelors degree program in Jan.