Career

Genetic Counselor

A genetic counselor takes a family's medical history and DNA test results and explains, in plain language, what those results mean for that family's health and what choices they have.

O*NET profile

Median pay (US)

$100,040

2025 · $48.09 an hour

O*NET source

Job outlook

Much faster than average

O*NET's band for this category is 7% or higher, 2024-2034

O*NET source

To get in the door

Graduate or professional degree

Most of these occupations require graduate school.

Openings a year

300

projected, nationally

O*NET source

What the day actually looks like

Interview the patient and read the records to build a full family medical history, then look for the inheritance pattern. O*NET's task list for 29-9092.00 states it as: 'Interview patients or review medical records to obtain comprehensive patient or family medical histories, and document findings.' Counselors normally draw that history as a pedigree, a family tree of who had what condition; O*NET lists pedigree drawing and management software among the tools of the job.
Explain the real test options before anything is ordered: what a panel covers, what it will not find, and what a result would actually change.
Read the lab report and translate it, including the answer nobody likes, a variant whose meaning is still uncertain, then communicate findings to the patient and to the ordering physician (O*NET, 29-9092.00).
Write the consultation report and a plain-language summary the patient and their doctor can both use (O*NET: 'write detailed consultation reports').
Work part of the day on video. Among counselors seeing patients in 2023, 87% used in-person visits, 82% used audiovisual telegenetics, and 72% used telephone-only (NSGC 2024 Professional Status Survey, Table 8, N=1,526,.

Skills you need first

Genetics and biology you can actually use, not memorize. Graduate programs require genetics coursework before you apply (Case Western requires one semester of genetics completed by its December 15 deadline).
Probability and statistics, because risk is the product. A 25% recurrence risk has to be explained correctly and then explained again in a way a scared parent can hold onto.
Plain-language explaining. The job is turning a lab report into sentences a family can act on.
Careful listening and interviewing, since family history often arrives incomplete, contradictory, or emotionally loaded.
Writing. Consult notes and summary letters are a daily deliverable, not an afterthought.
Emotional steadiness. You will deliver results that change how a family sees its future, and you will not get to fix the diagnosis.

How long people stay

Physically light, emotionally heavy, and there is real burnout data. In a study of 397 US clinical genetic counselors, 57.2% had Professional Fulfillment Index scores indicative of burnout, and higher burnout was associated with lower empathy and counseling alliance and a greater desire to cut back on clinical time (Caleshu et al., Journal of Genetic Counseling, 2022, PMID 34318970,. Contributors were mostly system-level: insufficient administrative support, lack of autonomy, and not feeling valued. On the stability side, 92% of NSGC 2024 survey respondents worked full-time, and 237 of 248 responding 2023 graduates (96%) had accepted a position by the end of that year. Typical career tenure, turnover rate, and retirement age for this occupation were not found in any source that could be verified, so treat those as unknown.

Where it is needed, and the different ways to do it

Real but small, and the historical shortage looks like it is closing rather than widening. BLS counts 3,740 genetic counselors employed nationally (OES, May 2025) and projects the occupation from 4,000 jobs in 2024 to 4,300 in 2034, +9.3%, with roughly 300 openings per year on average (BLS Employment Projections Table 1.2). The profession's own count is larger because it includes counselors in lab, industry, and non-clinical roles: the NSGC 2024 Professional Status Survey reports 6,985 certified genetic counselors in the US, says the profession grew more than 100% in ten years, and projects over 10,000 by 2030. That survey also reports 60 accredited training programs as of May 2024 in the United States and Canada combined, which is a North American count, not a US one. On shortage specifically: a peer-reviewed workforce study found 4,242 certified counselors as of May 2017 and projected that supply would reach equilibrium with demand between 2024 and 2030 (Hoskovec et al., Journal of Genetic Counseling, 2018, PMID 29052810,, and a Wisconsin study confirmed a shortage of direct patient care genetic counselors in Wisconsin, finding that state had about half its projected need (Dawson et al., Wisconsin Medical Journal, 2020, PMID 33091282,. That study surveyed Wisconsin and its conclusion is about Wisconsin. Honest read for a family: graduates get hired (96% of responding 2023 new grads in the NSGC survey had a position by year end), but the bottleneck is training seats, not job postings. Case Western accepts 12 students per year and Ohio State reports an average cohort of 12.

Hospital and academic medical center genetics clinic

The largest single setting. 40% of NSGC 2024 survey respondents worked at an academic medical center hospital (PSS 2024, Table 4), and BLS's National Employment Matrix projects about 1,600 of the 4,000 genetic counselor jobs in hospitals (state, local, and private), with about 1,300 of those in private general medical and surgical hospitals. Every BLS industry job count in this section comes from the National Employment Matrix for occupation 29-9092.

Outpatient clinic or physician's office

The BLS National Employment Matrix projects about 900 genetic counselor jobs in offices of physicians and about 300 in outpatient care centers, so a large share of the work happens in ordinary clinic rooms alongside oncologists, OB-GYNs, cardiologists, and pediatricians.

Commercial genetic testing laboratory

A whole career track with no patient panel. 'Laboratory Genetic Counselor' was 9% of job titles in the NSGC 2024 survey (Table 5), and counselors in non-direct patient care roles were the most likely to work for a commercial, non-academic lab. The BLS National Employment Matrix projects about 200 jobs in medical and diagnostic laboratories.

Telehealth and telegenetics

Not a separate employer so much as a changed workday. In 2023, 82% of counselors seeing patients used audiovisual telegenetics and 72% used telephone-only visits, and remote work stayed well above pre-2020 levels (NSGC 2024 survey, Table 8).

University teaching, training programs, and research

The BLS National Employment Matrix projects about 200 genetic counselor jobs in private colleges, universities, and professional schools, plus about 100 in scientific research and development. In the NSGC 2024 survey, 46% of respondents listed education and teaching as one of their roles (Table 6).

Industry, biotech, and pharma

O*NET lists 'Medical Science Liaison' among the reported job titles for this occupation, and 3% of NSGC 2024 respondents held that title (Table 5). The BLS National Employment Matrix projects about 100 jobs under management of companies and enterprises. Practice areas skew clinical overall: adult cancer 41%, prenatal 25%, pediatrics 23%, and 64% of counselors work in more than one area (NSGC 2024, Table 7).

AI and this career

exposure: moderate

The exposed part of this job is the front half of the visit. Two randomized trials found automated chatbots matched genetic counselors on the pretest step: the BRIDGE equivalence trial (3,073 patients, JAMA Network Open 2024) found chatbot and standard-of-care delivery equivalent for completing pretest cancer genetic services and completing testing, and a Cleveland Clinic trial of 37 women with breast cancer found no significant difference in knowledge or satisfaction between chatbot pretest counseling and a certified counselor (Annals of Surgical Oncology 2023). The protected part is judgment and disclosure. When four genetics experts scored ChatGPT on real genetics questions, GPT-4 improved over GPT-3.5 but still produced outdated-guideline answers and miscalculated risk figures, including one risk estimate with no identifiable basis in the literature the reviewers checked, and the authors concluded AI cannot yet replace the nuanced understanding and judgment of human professionals (JAMIA 2024). The profession is positioning itself to steer the tools rather than be replaced by them: NSGC adopted a position statement, 'The Use of Artificial Intelligence in Genetic Counseling' (4.29.2026), calling for genetic counselors to 'guide the responsible integration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools into genomic medicine' while keeping a person-centered approach at the core of practice. BLS still projects 9.3% growth for this occupation over 2024-2034, against 3.1% for all occupations combined.

Tasks likely to change

Routine pretest education and triage. Chatbots have already tested equivalent to counselor-delivered pretest services at scale (BRIDGE, n=3,073), which likely means fewer counselor hours spent on standard low-complexity education and more on the patients who need a person.
Documentation and patient-facing writing. Consult notes, summary letters, and consent material are the kind of drafting large language models do fastest, and anything a model drafts still has to be read and corrected by a counselor before it reaches a patient.
Lab-side triage. Software and machine learning tools are increasingly used to prioritize candidate genes and flag variants for review, which may shift laboratory genetic counselor work from first-pass sorting toward curation, adjudication, and signing off.
Access and volume. If the cheap front end works, more people get offered testing than counselors could ever have seen one at a time, which may raise demand for the human step at the back end rather than lower it.

Tasks that stay human

Delivering a result that changes a family's future, and staying in the room for the reaction. This is the emotional core of the job and the same emotional load that shows up as measured burnout (57.2% of 397 clinical counselors, Caleshu et al. 2022).
Reading an uncertain result. Variants of uncertain significance and conflicting evidence are exactly where expert reviewers caught AI producing confident, unsupported risk numbers (JAMIA 2024).
Building an accurate family history when the records conflict, relatives disagree, or nobody knows what grandma actually died of. That is an interview skill, not a retrieval task.
Accountability. A licensed clinician carries the clinical and legal responsibility for what gets ordered and what gets said, and software cannot hold that responsibility. State licensure rules for genetic counselors vary, and Ohio's specific requirement was not confirmed for this page, so ask the Ohio licensing board.

What genetic counselor work may look like

What a shift may look like in ten years: the patient arrives already educated. A chatbot walked them through what a hereditary cancer panel is, took a first pass at the family history, and flagged that a maternal aunt had ovarian cancer at 44, so the counselor opens the chart to a draft pedigree instead of a blank one. The morning is likely to be fewer, denser appointments. The easy pretest conversations may be gone, absorbed by software, and what is left is the hard middle: a family whose reported history does not match the records, a father who wants his 12-year-old tested for an adult-onset condition, a result that comes back uncertain and cannot be made certain by anyone. Reports may arrive pre-drafted, with the counselor's real work being to catch what the model got wrong, an outdated guideline, a risk number with no source, and to sign the version that goes to a human being. Afternoons may be more video than clinic room. The counselor may spend part of the week not counseling at all, but auditing the tools: checking what the chatbot told patients last month, sitting on the committee that decides which model is allowed near a patient. None of this is certain. It is also possible that reimbursement, state licensure rules, and liability slow the whole thing down, and that the job in 2036 looks a lot like the job today with better software in the background. What the evidence does not support is the simple version where the profession disappears. BLS projects the occupation grows, and the tasks the machines are best at are the ones counselors most often say they wish they had less of.

Sources:[1][2][3][4][5][6]

Open questions on this career

CORRECTED: a Wisconsin workforce study was described as finding a national shortage. It surveyed Wisconsin and its conclusion is about Wisconsin, which had about half its projected need (Dawson et al., Wisconsin Medical Journal, 2020).
CORRECTED: the count of 60 accredited training programs as of May 2024 covers the United States and Canada together, not the United States alone. That matters because the point of the paragraph is how few US training seats exist.
CORRECTED: the description of family-history work was credited to an O*NET task that never uses the word pedigree. O*NET's actual task wording is now quoted, and pedigree software is cited where O*NET actually lists it.

Pay and outlook come from O*NET, the US Department of Labor's occupation site, and every figure links back to it. We do not publish tuition or cost figures here: those change often, so use each school's own page and phone number below. Tell Mr. Mendoza if anything looks wrong.

See somebody do it

Genetic Counselors Career VideoCareerOneStop, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor (page confirmed live with full transcript; also on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dUsxWtP5GgE)Careers in Individualized Medicine: Genetic CounselorMayo Clinic (confirmed live, channel @MayoClinic)Careers in Genetics: Genetic CounselorGreenwood Genetic Center (confirmed live, channel @GreenwoodGeneticCenter)

Where you can train for it

3 programs

Read these as minimums, not targets.Meeting the numbers below is what lets you apply; it is not what gets you in. Selective programs admit far fewer people than apply, and admitted students are usually well above the minimum. Call the program and ask what last year's admitted class actually looked like. That one phone call is worth more than any number on this page.

Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine

Cleveland, OH · Master of Science in Genetic Counseling, 21 months full-time, accepts 12 students per year

Genetic Counseling Training Program, MS in Genetic Counseling (a dual MS in Genetic Counseling and MA in Bioethics is also offered)

What they ask for

Baccalaureate degree at time of admission and a minimum undergraduate GPA of 3.0 on a 4.0 scale.
Prerequisite coursework: one year of biology, one semester each of genetics, biochemistry, statistics, and psychology. You do not have to finish all of it before applying. The program's page says applicants may apply with no more than two prerequisite courses in progress, but one semester of genetics must be completed by the application deadline.
Application deadline December 15 each year; interviews typically February or March; Match results mid-April.
Registration in the Genetic Counseling Admissions Match through National Matching Services is required before applying.
Three letters of recommendation and a personal interview; GRE scores are not required and will not be reviewed.

The closest program to John Hay, on the CWRU campus in Cleveland. Program email genetics@case.edu. Confirm accreditation before counting on this program: its own page says it has been accredited by the Accreditation Council for Genetic Counseling since 1998 and was 'reaccredited in 2018 for 8 years', which would run out around 2026. Accreditation is what allows a graduate to sit for certification, so ask the program directly and check the ACGC directory for the current end date. For cost, contact the program or the CWRU bursar.

Program page 216.368.3431

The Ohio State University College of Medicine

Columbus, OH · Master of Science in Genetic Counseling; average cohort size 12; ACGC accreditation through 2031

Genetic Counseling Graduate Program (MS Genetic Counseling)

What they ask for

Prerequisite coursework in biochemistry, genetics, statistics, and psychology.
Application deadline December 15.
Three letters of recommendation.
All applicants must first register for the Genetic Counseling Admissions Match with National Matching Services before applying.
Application submitted through Ohio State Graduate and Professional Admissions (gpadmissions.osu.edu).

Program office at 2012 Kenny Road, Columbus, OH 43221; email OhioStateGCProgram@osumc.edu. The program page reports 35 or more fieldwork opportunities and states 100% of graduates are employed in genetic counseling or a related field. A minimum 3.0 GPA appeared in search results but was not printed on the pages that were read, so verify it with the program. For cost, use the University Registrar's tuition and fees tables and the Graduate and Professional Cost of Attendance.

Program page 614-293-4347

University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center

Cincinnati, OH · Master of Science in Medical Genetics, granted by the University of Cincinnati; two years, 62 credit hours, 11 fieldwork rotations, and a master's thesis; ACGC accredited through 2029

Genetic Counseling Graduate Program (partnership between the University of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Children's)

What they ask for

Bachelor's degree or foreign equivalent, plus CV, personal statement, transcripts, and three letters of recommendation submitted through the online system.
Application deadline January 5 of the year you want to be considered for an interview.
Registration in the Genetic Counseling Admissions Match is required to be considered for admission.
What the admissions page actually asks for: 'a strong background in biology and genetics, volunteer or advocacy experience in counseling or working with individuals with disabilities, and experience with the genetic counseling field.' The page publishes no GPA minimum and no specific course list, so ask the program what it expects.

Established in 1982, one of the oldest genetic counseling programs in the country. Program coordinator Isabel Castro, MS; email gcprog@cchmc.org; mailing address 3333 Burnet Ave., ML 4006, Cincinnati, OH 45229. A second listed phone is 513-636-0543. Those contact details and the degree, credit-hour, rotation, and accreditation details are printed on the program's contact and about pages rather than the admissions page linked above: https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/education/clinical/student-grad/genetic-counseling/contact and https://www.cincinnatichildrens.org/education/clinical/student-grad/genetic-counseling/about. For cost, the program directs families to the University of Cincinnati Bursar's Office under 'Standard Program' in the College of Medicine; it also says the majority of its students receive some financial aid and that students may qualify for in-state rates in the second year after establishing Ohio residency.

Program page 513-636-8448

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