---
title: "End-of-Life Doula"
description: "Offers nonmedical emotional and practical support to dying people and their families, from planning and vigils to grief after the death."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/end-of-life-doula"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# End-of-Life Doula

**Category:** Healthcare Support · **SOC code:** 31-1122 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 31-1122.00

Offers nonmedical emotional and practical support to dying people and their families, from planning and vigils to grief after the death.

Also advertised as: Death Doula; Death Midwife; End-of-Life Companion; Hospice Doula; Transition Doula.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $35,800 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $17.21/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $27,040 to $45,040, with the middle half between $31,920 and $39,470
- **Total US employment:** 4,305,810
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +18.1% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 760,500 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 60/100 — 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 4,305,810 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $27,040 |
| 25th | $31,920 |
| 50th (median) | $35,800 |
| 75th | $39,470 |
| 90th | $45,040 |
| Mean (average) | $36,120 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| WA | $47,730 | $44,602 | 103,260 |
| OR | $44,410 | $42,966 | 42,330 |
| RI | $43,680 | $42,706 | 7,490 |
| DC | $42,700 | $38,853 | 12,810 |
| VT | $41,600 | $42,467 | 7,700 |
| MA | $40,910 | $38,683 | 117,940 |
| AK | $39,740 | $38,824 | 6,530 |
| NY | $39,620 | $36,712 | 663,140 |
| ND | $39,440 | $44,335 | 7,730 |
| CT | $38,990 | $37,632 | 49,510 |
| NH | $38,760 | $37,210 | 9,440 |
| ME | $38,580 | $39,753 | 18,630 |
| CO | $38,540 | $37,399 | 44,650 |
| MN | $38,370 | $38,907 | 128,680 |
| HI | $38,110 | $34,661 | 6,150 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/end-of-life-doula/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/end-of-life-doula.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 4,677,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 5,524,400 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 847,300 jobs, or +18.1%. Much faster than average: 18.1% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 760,500 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:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### 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 |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 47.8% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 22.5% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 17.5% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 6.2% |
| Some College Courses | 6.0% |

## What the work involves

- Meet with dying people and families to understand their wishes
- Help plan the setting and rituals of a person's final days
- Support legacy projects such as letters and recorded stories
- Explain the physical signs of approaching death to families
- Sit vigil and give caregivers rest
- Coordinate with hospice teams and other providers
- Support early grief and help with rituals after death
- Refer families to grief, legal and funeral resources

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.8 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 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 2.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- English Language — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Transportation — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Public Safety and Security — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.1 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), Conventional (C), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.19 |
| C — Conventional | 3.92 |
| R — Realistic | 3.51 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.28 |
| A — Artistic | 2.93 |
| I — Investigative | 1.80 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 83.3 |
| ESFP | 77.2 |
| ENFJ | 70.8 |
| ISFJ | 70.7 |
| ENFP | 56.6 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Personal Care Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/personal-care-aide) — median $35,800
- [Home Health Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/home-health-aide) — median $35,800
- [Nursing Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nursing-assistant) — median $42,260
- [School Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/school-social-worker) — median $59,550
- [Nanny](https://nuecareer.com/careers/nanny) — median $34,980
- [Social and Human Service Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-and-human-service-assistant) — median $45,930
- [Psychiatric Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/psychiatric-aide) — median $44,910
- [Occupational Therapy Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/occupational-therapy-aide) — median $39,160
- [Rehabilitation Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/rehabilitation-counselor) — median $46,850
- [Physical Therapist Aide](https://nuecareer.com/careers/physical-therapist-aide) — median $35,240

## 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/end-of-life-doula