---
title: "Child Life Specialist"
description: "Helps children and families cope with hospitalization, illness, and medical procedures through play, preparation, and education."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/child-life-specialist"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Child Life Specialist

**Category:** Healthcare Practitioners and Technical · **SOC code:** 29-1125 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 29-1125.00

Helps children and families cope with hospitalization, illness, and medical procedures through play, preparation, and education.

Also advertised as: Certified Child Life Specialist; CCLS; Pediatric Child Life Specialist; Child Life Coordinator.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $61,960 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $29.79/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $40,990 to $100,420, with the middle half between $50,240 and $79,930
- **Total US employment:** 14,930
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.8% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 1,400 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 61/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 14,930 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $40,990 |
| 25th | $50,240 |
| 50th (median) | $61,960 |
| 75th | $79,930 |
| 90th | $100,420 |
| Mean (average) | $67,630 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $98,170 | $88,665 | 1,920 |
| DC | $95,640 | $87,024 | 50 |
| NH | $82,280 | $78,990 | 70 |
| NV | $78,730 | $78,747 | 400 |
| WA | $77,860 | $72,758 | 240 |
| MN | $76,360 | $77,428 | 250 |
| CO | $66,580 | $64,608 | 200 |
| OR | $66,530 | $64,367 | 250 |
| NY | $65,520 | $60,711 | 1,230 |
| HI | $64,500 | $58,662 | 40 |
| MD | $64,300 | $61,262 | 290 |
| VT | $63,380 | $64,701 | 40 |
| CT | $63,240 | $61,037 | 380 |
| NE | $62,980 | $69,898 | 150 |
| MA | $62,820 | $59,400 | 210 |

34 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 49 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/child-life-specialist/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/child-life-specialist.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 15,600 in the 2025–2035 base year to 16,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 800 jobs, or +4.8%. Faster than average: 4.8% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 1,400 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 91.9% |
| Post-Baccalaureate Certificate | 5.4% |
| Master's Degree | 2.7% |

## What the work involves

- Prepare children for surgery and procedures using age-appropriate explanations and medical play
- Provide coaching and distraction during needle sticks, imaging, and other procedures
- Assess a child's developmental stage and coping style and share findings with the care team
- Lead therapeutic and normalizing play sessions in playrooms and at the bedside
- Support siblings and parents through diagnosis, treatment, and bereavement
- Teach children coping strategies for pain and anxiety
- Plan hospital events and activities that maintain a sense of normal childhood
- Document interventions and outcomes in the medical record

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Service Orientation — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Psychology — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sociology and Anthropology — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Social (S), Investigative (I), Artistic (A).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.82 |
| I — Investigative | 4.32 |
| A — Artistic | 3.88 |
| R — Realistic | 3.69 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.44 |
| C — Conventional | 2.67 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFP | 73.3 |
| ENFJ | 70.6 |
| ESFP | 70.4 |
| INFP | 66.2 |
| INFJ | 63.9 |

Best-fitting types: ENFP, ENFJ, ESFP.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Recreational Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/recreational-therapist) — median $61,960
- [Occupational Therapy Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-assistant) — median $72,300
- [Psychiatric Technician](https://nuecareer.com/careers/psychiatric-technician) — median $45,130
- [Occupational Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapist) — median $100,330
- [Physical Therapist Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist-assistant) — median $68,380
- [Occupational Therapy Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-aide) — median $39,160
- [Physical Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist) — median $102,760
- [Physical Therapist Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist-aide) — median $35,240
- [Rehabilitation Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/rehabilitation-counselor) — median $46,850
- [Art Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/art-therapist) — median $77,930

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/child-life-specialist