Time Machine

Credit counselors

Name: Credit Counselors: employment and wages since 1960
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Also called Financial counselor, Debt counselor, Consumer credit counselor, Debt management counselor, DMP counselor

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 27,770 US credit counselors, with median pay of $52,230 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2012, the highest was 35,900, in May 2017. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 500 from 1960, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for credit counselors: Integrated DMP administration software and mobile client portals, 2012 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 3.3% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

69.3% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023

Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.

Last updated 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Credit counselors: jobs and pay since 1960 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/13-2071

Chicago

Future History. "Credit counselors: jobs and pay since 1960." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/13-2071.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_13_2071, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Credit counselors: jobs and pay since 1960}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/13-2071}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }

The access date is today's date on your device.

drag to travel through time

19752000now

2026

Known then as Credit Counselor / Consumer Credit Counselor (CCCS agency era)

Known then as Consumer Credit Counselor / Financial Counselor (creditor-funded NFCC expansion era)

Known then as Consumer Credit Counselor / Debt Management Counselor (DMP standardization era)

Known then as Credit Counselor / Debt Counselor (SOC 13-2071 introduction; BAPCPA run-up)

Known then as Credit Counselors (BLS SOC 13-2071; BAPCPA-certified era)

Known today as Credit Counselors (BLS SOC 13-2071; BAPCPA-certified era)

Projected to still be called Credit Counselors (BLS SOC 13-2071; BAPCPA-certified era)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

28K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$52,230

Est.

≈ $50,891 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1951

NFCC founded at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel in New York City on June 7-8, 1951. The founding meeting was convened by creditors, merchants, and community representatives as a structured alternative to exploitative debt adjusters. The fairshare (creditor-funded) model financed nonprofit agencies from their inception.

Beat · 1968

The Consumer Credit Protection Act (Truth in Lending Act) passed in 1968, requiring standardized disclosure of credit terms and interest rates. This created both a new client education need for counselors (explaining what APR meant to borrowers who had never seen the term) and a new analytical tool (counselors could now compare stated APRs across creditors to prioritize repayment).

Beat · 1984

The Association for Financial Counseling and Planning Education (AFCPE) was founded at Iowa State University in 1984, establishing the first academic and professional home for financial counselors and educators. AFCPE would go on to create the Accredited Financial Counselor (AFC) credential, the primary professional certification for nonprofit credit counselors.

Beat · 2005

BAPCPA became effective on October 17, 2005, creating the mandatory pre-bankruptcy credit counseling requirement. Every bankruptcy petitioner in the United States must complete a credit counseling briefing from a US Trustee-approved nonprofit agency within 180 days before filing. More than two million bankruptcies were filed in 2005 alone, with a major pre-BAPCPA filing surge in September-October 2005. The Act also required post-discharge financial management education, creating a second federally mandated service line for approved agencies.

Beat · 2010

The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010 created the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which took over supervision of credit counseling agencies from the FTC and established new oversight mechanisms. The CFPB's subsequent supervisory highlights series on credit counseling and debt management (2024 edition) became a primary compliance reference for agency counselors.

Beat · 2023

NFCC research and industry literature consistently identify the human counselor relationship, not the budget spreadsheet, as the primary mechanism of DMP success. At a moment when AI tools were automating the analytical components of the role (intake data gathering, document drafting, financial education content), NFCC member agencies and behavioral-finance researchers argued that accountability, trust, and motivational-interviewing skill are what drive debt recovery outcomes and distinguish professional credit counseling from self-managed repayment.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1951

On June 7 and 8, 1951, at the Barbizon-Plaza Hotel in New York City, a group of creditors, merchants, and community representatives convened and agreed to establish what would become the National Foundation for Credit Counseling (NFCC) and its network of Consumer Credit Counseling Service (CCCS) agencies. The meeting was not primarily about helping consumers: it was about reducing default losses. Leading retailers and credit card issuers had watched debt adjusters and proraters prey on indebted consumers throughout the late 1940s, and in 1955 the National Better Business Bureau would call these operations a national scandal. The NFCC model was different in design. Creditors paid a small percentage of recovered funds back to the agency, a structure called the fair-share or fairshare model, giving nonprofit agencies the resources to operate while aligning their financial interest with creditor recoveries. In these early offices, a counselor sat across a desk from someone overwhelmed by installment debt, department-store credit, and personal loans. The job was unglamorous and low-paid: review the household budget, find the surplus, contact each creditor, and arrange a repayment schedule the consumer could hold. No certification existed, no professional association oversaw the work, and most counselors learned the role entirely by doing it. The first Diners Club card had launched only the year before, in 1950. The timing was not coincidental. American consumer credit was expanding from a niche product into a mass-market institution, and the people who most needed help navigating it were about to become a large and permanent client base. What began as a creditor-protection mechanism at the Barbizon-Plaza would, over the following seven decades, evolve into a licensed, regulated, federally mandated profession with its own certifications, academic associations, and a body of behavioral-finance research demonstrating that the human coaching relationship the counselor provides is the mechanism of debt recovery, not the repayment spreadsheet alone.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace credit counselors? What the research says

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.

Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.

What published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

+3.3%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 13-2071 (Credit counselors): 31.2 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 32.3 thousand in 2035, a change of +1.0 thousand (+3.3%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers (0.9% of this occupation in 2025). The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

69.3%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 13-2071.00 Credit Counselors. Shown: human-rated β = 0.693, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.455 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.932; GPT-4-rated β 0.625. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for credit counselors

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereCalculate clients' available monthly income for debt repayment and construct a realistic spending plan: use AI-powered budgeting tools to auto-categorize 3–12 months of transaction history, surface discretionary spending patterns, and generate a draft spending plan, then work with the client to validate, adjust, and emotionally commit to the numbers before moving to a repayment structure.

Calculate clients' available monthly income for debt repayment and construct a realistic spending plan: use AI-powered budgeting tools to auto-categorize 3–12 months of transaction history, surface discretionary spending patterns, and generate a draft spending plan, then work with the client to validate, adjust, and emotionally commit to the numbers before moving to a repayment structure.^{[11],[12],[5]}

Tools picking this up

Cleo AI ↗Albert AI ↗

Where your edge is

AI-generated spending plans are accurate but emotionally inert: a client who did not participate in building their budget will not follow it. Develop facilitation skills to walk clients through the AI-generated snapshot, surface the categories where behavioral change is feasible vs. fixed, and build their ownership of the plan. The counselor's job shifts from calculation to commitment-building.

AI is sitting alongside you hereMaintain client account records, session notes, DMP correspondence, and document images in agency case management systems

Maintain client account records, session notes, DMP correspondence, and document images in agency case management systems; use Microsoft 365 Copilot or agency-specific AI tools to draft follow-up emails, summarize session notes, and generate progress updates for clients on their DMP status, reducing the documentation burden on counselors managing caseloads of 100–400 active DMP clients.^{[13],[2],[14]}

Tools picking this up

Microsoft 365 Copilot ↗ChatGPT ↗

Where your edge is

Documentation automation is a genuine productivity multiplier for counselors managing large caseloads: NFCC member agencies have average counselor-to-active-client ratios that make thorough manual documentation unsustainable. Adopt whatever documentation AI your agency offers and build a review habit: AI-drafted notes are a scaffold, not a final record. Your signature on a session note carries professional and legal accountability that AI cannot share.

Get started with these tools

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft LearnCourse· beginner

Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot ↗

Free

Microsoft LearnCourse· intermediate

Empower your workforce with Microsoft 365 Copilot Use Cases (MS-4004) ↗

Free

Microsoft LearnCertification· beginner

Microsoft 365 Certified: Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals (AB-900) ↗

$99

ChatGPT

OpenAITutorial· beginner

OpenAI Academy ↗

Free

AI is sitting alongside you hereAssess clients' complete financial situations at intake by reviewing income, assets, monthly expenses, debt balances, interest rates, and credit reports

Assess clients' complete financial situations at intake by reviewing income, assets, monthly expenses, debt balances, interest rates, and credit reports; deploy AI-assisted intake tools (Money Management International's pre-session budget builder or similar) to auto-populate a client financial snapshot from permissioned data connections before the session begins, freeing the counselor from data-entry to focus on behavioral coaching from the first minute.^[15],[6],[2]

Tools picking this up

Cleo AI ↗Microsoft 365 Copilot ↗

Where your edge is

AI tools can aggregate financial data faster than any intake form, but they cannot assess the emotional weight a client carries about their debt (the shame, the avoidance patterns, the relationship strain) that determines whether they will follow through on a repayment plan. Build motivational interviewing skills to surface the behavioral drivers behind the numbers; the data snapshot AI delivers is the starting point, not the counseling.

Get started with these tools

Microsoft 365 Copilot

Microsoft LearnCourse· beginner

Get started with Microsoft 365 Copilot ↗

Free

Microsoft LearnCourse· intermediate

Empower your workforce with Microsoft 365 Copilot Use Cases (MS-4004) ↗

Free

Microsoft LearnCertification· beginner

Microsoft 365 Certified: Copilot and Agent Administration Fundamentals (AB-900) ↗

$99

Where credit counselors go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Personal Financial Advisors
US median pay
$105,070 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+1.4%
Loan Officers
US median pay
$76,690 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+1.1%
Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Workers
US median pay
$60,280 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+10.3%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Personal Financial Advisors

Credit counselors develop a deep foundation in personal financial planning (budgeting, debt management, credit mechanics, and behavioral financial coaching) that is directly applicable to personal financial advising. The key delta is investment product knowledge and the securities licensing that wealth advisory requires (Series 65 or 66). Credit counselors who work in the HUD housing counseling track also develop mortgage and asset-protection literacy that financial advisors use. BLS projects growth for Personal Financial Advisors through 2034, one of the fastest in financial services, and the fee-based advisory model carries a CRI meaningfully above the trajectory for credit counselors. The pivot is driven by upgrading from crisis intervention (debt crisis) to proactive planning (wealth building), leveraging the same trust-based client relationship skill.

What you'd add

· Series 65 (Uniform Investment Adviser Law) or Series 66 license for investment adviser registration
· Investment product literacy: mutual funds, ETFs, annuities, life insurance, and retirement accounts (IRAs, 401k)
· Financial planning methodology: retirement income projections, tax-aware asset allocation, estate planning basics
· CFP (Certified Financial Planner) curriculum: especially the financial plan development and behavioral finance modules
· Financial planning software: eMoney Advisor, MoneyGuide Pro, or RightCapital for plan construction

What it takesSome new skills to pick up

Tools of the era

How has the work of credit counselors changed since 1951?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Paper ledger and phone (manual creditor negotiation era)
The first CCCS counselors worked with paper ledgers, adding-machine tape, and a telephone. A session meant hand-writing each creditor's balance and interest rate, calculating total monthly minimum payments, subtracting essential living expenses from household income, and finding the surplus that could be committed to a DMP. Creditor negotiation happened by phone, with counselors maintaining personal relationships with contacts at major banks and retail chains. There was no software, no standardized form, no digital credit report. The counselor's personal knowledge of each creditor's policies and willingness to negotiate was the tool.
Early personal computer and debt management software (DOS-era agency systems)
Consumer Credit Counseling Services began adopting mainframe and early PC-based systems in the late 1970s and through the 1980s to manage the growing volume of DMP accounts. DOS-era agency software tracked client balances, creditor payment schedules, and disbursement histories that had previously required paper ledgers. The first true DMP administration software platforms allowed agencies to manage hundreds of active plans per counselor and to generate standardized creditor payment packets. This was the first major productivity inflection for the role: the counselor's intake math moved from adding machine to database, and creditor correspondence became templated rather than hand-typed.
Digital credit reports and telephone/internet counseling (Fair Credit Reporting Act modernization era)
The 1992 amendments to the Fair Credit Reporting Act and the subsequent growth of the three-bureau credit reporting system (Equifax, Experian, TransUnion) gave counselors instantaneous access to a client's full credit picture at the start of a session. Pre-internet, counselors either hand-tabulated debt from client documents or ordered paper credit reports by mail with days-long turnaround. Digital bureau access transformed intake: by the mid-1990s, a trained counselor could pull a merged credit report in minutes, review all open accounts, and build a DMP proposal in a single session. Telephone counseling also expanded in this era, as NFCC agencies began serving clients across state lines without requiring an in-person office visit.
BAPCPA-approved agency platforms and online counseling (mandatory pre-bankruptcy briefing era)
The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 required every bankruptcy petitioner to complete a credit counseling briefing from a US Trustee-approved nonprofit agency within weeks before filing. This created an entirely new service line: the pre-bankruptcy briefing, which could be delivered by phone or internet under the statute. Agencies invested in online delivery platforms and call-center infrastructure to handle the volume: more than two million bankruptcy cases were filed in 2005 alone, creating a surge in mandated counseling demand. The US Trustee Program's approval and monitoring framework also brought new compliance technology into the role, with agencies managing client records, session documentation, and certificate issuance under federal oversight.
Effect on the work
BAPCPA briefly inflated the approved-agency workforce as organizations rushed to obtain US Trustee approval and hire counselors to handle mandatory briefings. The surge was partly artificial: many BAPCPA briefings were short, standardized, and lower-intensity than traditional DMP counseling, and the volume declined after the 2005 pre-BAPCPA bankruptcy filing surge worked through the system.
Integrated DMP administration software (Debtor Logic, Nucleus) and mobile client portals
The 2010s saw the maturation of purpose-built DMP administration software platforms used by NFCC member agencies. Systems like Debtor Logic and Nucleus Software automated creditor payment distribution, tracked plan compliance in real time, generated client statements, and managed the disbursement workflows that had previously required manual reconciliation. Mobile client portals let DMP clients check their balances and payment schedules from their phones without calling the agency. Counselors moved from transaction administrators to case managers: the software handled the mechanics of the plan, freeing counselors to focus on the behavioral coaching and creditor escalations where human judgment was genuinely required.
AI intake tools and generative AI for financial education (Cleo, Albert, MMI AI intake, ChatGPT/Claude)
Beginning around 2020 and accelerating sharply from 2023, AI-powered personal finance tools began automating the analytical layer of a credit counselor's work. Apps like Cleo AI (7M+ users by 2025) and Albert AI auto-categorize bank transactions, generate spending plans, and surface debt paydown recommendations before a client ever meets a counselor. Money Management International deployed AI intake tools that pre-build a client's debt and budget snapshot from permissioned data connections before the first session. ChatGPT and Claude allow counselors to draft plain-language creditor letters, client education materials, and hardship accommodations far faster than before. The counselor's intake math moved from database to AI dashboard; the session time that math consumed can now go entirely to behavioral coaching. The role's moat in this era is not the data: it is the trust relationship, the motivational interviewing skill, and the HUD regulatory anchor requiring human counselor sessions for specific federally backed mortgage transactions.
Effect on the work
AI tools have increased per-counselor capacity by reducing session time spent on data gathering and document drafting, partly offsetting the employment pressure from a 28,110 headcount (2024) that is already well below the 2017 peak of 35,900. BLS projects +3% employment growth through 2034, modest but positive, reflecting stable demand for behavioral coaching services that AI augments rather than replaces.

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Credit Counselors employment and pay by year

On record since1951

Latest US employment27,770 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$52,230 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+3.3% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1960	500	n/a	Est., National Foundation for Credit… Researched context	Report
1980	6,000	$12,000	Est., Credit counseling Wikipedia (employment) Researched contextEst., Consumer Credit Counselor (pay) Researched context	Report
1990	12,000	n/a	Est., Credit Counseling Researched context	Report
2000	30,000	$29,000	Est., Bills.com Researched context	Report
2003	30,810	$33,470	BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic	Report
2004	31,160	$33,970	BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic	Report
2005	28,030	$35,680	BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic	Report
2006	30,430	$35,790	BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic	Report
2007	30,150	$36,550	BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic	Report
2008	29,430	$37,470	BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic	Report
2009	30,360	$37,320	BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic	Report
2010	29,560	$38,140	BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic	Report
2011	29,400	$38,430	BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic	Report
2012	27,640	$39,420	BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic	Report
2013	27,710	$40,280	BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic	Report
2014	29,600	$42,110	BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic	Report
2015	30,510	$43,840	BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic	Report
2016	34,110	$44,380	BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic	Report
2017	35,900	$44,710	BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic	Report
2018	35,740	$45,180	BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic	Report
2019	32,110	$45,950	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	30,770	$46,170	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	31,230	$47,580	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	29,090	$47,320	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	27,950	$48,570	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	28,110	$50,480	BLS OEWS May 2024 (employment) Official statisticBLS OEWS May 2024 (pay) Official statistic	Report
2025	27,770	$52,230	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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Where credit counselors go next

Personal Financial Advisors

Paper ledger and phone (manual creditor negotiation era)Paper ledger1951–1975

Early personal computer and debt management software (DOS-era agency systems)Early personal computer1975–1992

Digital credit reports and telephone/internet counseling (Fair Credit Reporting Act modernization era)Digital credit reports1992–2005

BAPCPA-approved agency platforms and online counseling (mandatory pre-bankruptcy briefing era)BAPCPA-approved agency platforms2005–2015

Integrated DMP administration software (Debtor Logic, Nucleus) and mobile client portalsIntegrated DMP administration software2012–2020

AI intake tools and generative AI for financial education (Cleo, Albert, MMI AI intake, ChatGPT/Claude)AI intake tools2020–present

Credit Counselors employment and pay by year

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