Recent public policy debates regarding welfare reform have put social service workers and the social service industry under intense scrutiny, with much discussion about the system’s drawbacks and the ability – or inability – of social service workers to carry out their tasks. Unfortunately, much less attention has been paid to the difficult working conditions and relatively low wages, which characterize the industry.

Employment and Earnings

The social services industry employs a substantial number of people in various professional and technical occupations, the greatest number being preschool teachers, social workers, counselors, and human service workers. Their numbers are projected to grow rapidly.

Professional workers in this industry provide a variety of services. Those working in individual and family service institutions, for example, primarily provide counseling and assistance with food and rent supplements and refugee assistance. Those employed in residential care typically offer around-the-clock personal care to children, the elderly and others with limited ability to care for themselves, including those undergoing alcohol and drug rehabilitation, the mentally ill and the developmentally disabled. Those who work in vocational training and job placement help train or rehabilitate those who are disadvantaged in the job market due to lack of education, job skills or experience. Professionals in child-care often work for programs such as Head Start, or in other programs that offer before- or after-school care and education for children. Finally, many social service professionals can be found working with community and religious groups, unions, and other organizations working for social change, the alleviation of poverty and community improvement.

Earnings in the social services industry are quite low. There are many reasons for these relatively low earnings, one of which is the sizeable incidence of part-time and temporary work in the industry. Between 1988 and 1995, part-timers among the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) membership rose from 18.6% to 22.2% of the total and 91.6% of those who worked part-time were women. Those who work part-time in the social service industry are also much more likely to be young and to hold bachelors rather than advanced social work degrees (Gibelman and Schervish, 1997). While almost 65% of NASW members holding Ph.D.’s earned in excess of $40,000, only 6.8% of bachelors degree holders earned a comparable amount.

Working Conditions in the Industry

Severe understaffing at many social service agencies has resulted in long hours and huge caseloads. Indeed, complaints about poor working conditions have been behind some of the industry’s most dramatic work stoppages in recent years, including a 1997 walk-out by child-service workers in Los Angeles county. Nearly half of the agency’s 1,500 field-level case workers were carrying more cases than allowed by their union contract, which set limits 20%-25% above the optimum (Rainey and Meyer, 1997).

In recent years, additional job pressures are reported to have been caused by the computerization of caseloads. Though hailed as a way to ameliorate the voluminous paperwork each case requires, software problems and inadequate training may actually have increased stress and the amount of time spent filing and organizing case documentation (Wong, 1998).

The social work professions can also be quite dangerous. Newhill (1995) asserts, for example, that social workers run the highest risk (exceeded only by police officers) of work-related violence, and that incidents of such violence have grown as understaffing has become more prevalent. Data presented by the Career Guide to Industries indicate that rates of occupational injury and illness are higher in several sectors of the social service industry than in other industries. For example, in 1997, the incidence rate of occupational illness and injury for workers in all private industries averaged 7.1 per 100 full-time workers, while the rates for social workers employed in residential care and job training were 9.9 and 9.7, respectively.

Trends in the Industry

One of the major challenges to the profession, according to the National Association of Social Workers, is the deterioration of employment standards in the public sector of the social services industry. Many working in this industry sector are the least educated and least experienced of all NASW members. Gibelman and Schervish (1997) assert that "the hiring of less experienced or less educated personnel may be a way to control agency costs" (p. 158), but the NASW frets that clients with some of the most complex or severe socioeconomic or psychosocial problems are being served by the least educated and least experienced professionals in the field.

Perhaps because of this degradation of standards in the public sector, the number of private practices, (defined as the direct delivery of clinical social services without a mediating public agency) have grown in recent years. The number of NASW members engaged in private practice increased from 10.9% in 1982 to 19.7% in 1995 (Gibelman and Schervish, 1997).

Despite problems in the public sector, the Career Guide to Industries anticipates an overall 41.1% increase in total employment in social service industries (excluding child care) over the decade ending in 2008. The increase includes a 56.8% increase in residential care, 31% in job training and rehabilitation services and 32.5% in individual and miscellaneous social services. A 32.3% increase in child-care services is also anticipated.

With employment growing alongside serious problems in working conditions, the social service occupations appear to be ripe for union growth beyond the relatively low density rate of 11% that prevailed in 1998.

Sources Cited

Bureau of National Affairs. Union Membership and Earnings Data Book: Compilations from the Current Population Survey. (1993 and 1999 editions). Washington, DC.

Gibelman, Margaret and Philip H. Schervish. 1997. Who We Are: A Second Look. National Association of Social Workers Press. Washington, DC.

Kestin, Sally. "Social Worker Test Prompts Lawsuit." Sun-Sentinel, August 26,1998, pp. 5B.

Newhill, Christina E. 1995. "Client violence towards social workers: A practice and policy concern for the 1990s." Social Work, Vol. 40, No.5, pp. 631-38.

Rainey, James and Josh Meyer. "Child Social Workers Walk Out." Los Angeles Times. October 1, 1997, p. B1.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2000. Career Guide to Industries 2000-01 Edition, Bulletin 2523, Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. 1996. National Industry Staffing Pattern Data.

U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2000. National Industry-Occupation Employment Matrix, http://stats.bls.gov/asp/nioem/empiob.asp.

Wong, Doris Sue. "New technology stalls DSS." Boston Globe. April 12, 1998, p. B3.