Workforce Shortage Numbers

A lot of talk about a workforce shortage and ways to increase the number of licensed therapists. But is there really not enough therapists to go around? Let's see what the numbers say.

The Working Variables

• 32,000,000-Texas citizens
• 45,000-Licensed LPC and LMFT's in Texas
• 20%-Annual active client rate
• 4-Average number of appts per active client, per year
• 50-Number of weeks a counselor will work this year.
• 20-Number of appts per week for a F/T counselor.

Running the Equation

32 million citizens divided by 45 thousand active, licensed therapists yields a citizen to therapist ratio of 711:1. (Counting Psychologists and Social Workers only skews the formula outcome even more in favor of no shortage of licensees!)

That means there is one therapist for every 711 TX citizens.

How many of those 711 citizens will choose to see a therapist this year? We think it's probably about 10% but we're going to use 20% to eliminate any doubt.

711 citizens times 20% tells us that 142 people in that cohort will visit a therapist this year, and we're assuming that they will see this counselor an average of 4 times.

That yields a total of 568 total appointments for a calendar year including no-shows! 568 appointments divided by 50 weeks gives our therapist an average weekly calendar with just over 11 appointments per week.

We defined F/T as 20 appts per week so our average TX therapist is working P/T hours. So where's the shortage?

Conclusion

There is no shortage of licensed counselors. There is an "access to those counselors" problem which we will discuss elsewhere. Plus, if there's a workforce shortage issue that means those existing counselors would be in high demand which would ultimately mean that therapists would be getting paid far more than they are now because increased demand raises prices. That's not happening, is it. The problems lie elsewhere and until we fix the underlying systemic chokepoints then we're just putting band-aids on symptoms of the larger issues.