---
title: "Geriatric Care Manager"
description: "Guides older adults and their families through care decisions, coordinating doctors, home care, housing, benefits and crises."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/geriatric-care-manager"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Geriatric Care Manager

**Category:** Community and Social Service · **SOC code:** 21-1022 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 21-1022.00

Guides older adults and their families through care decisions, coordinating doctors, home care, housing, benefits and crises.

Also advertised as: Aging Life Care Professional; Aging Life Care Manager; Elder Care Manager; Private Care Manager; Senior Care Advisor.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $67,880 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $32.63/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $46,220 to $100,360, with the middle half between $56,710 and $82,240
- **Total US employment:** 187,630
- **Typical entry education:** Master's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +8.5% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 16,900 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 45/100 — 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 187,630 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $46,220 |
| 25th | $56,710 |
| 50th (median) | $67,880 |
| 75th | $82,240 |
| 90th | $100,360 |
| Mean (average) | $71,790 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $94,100 | $85,623 | 420 |
| CA | $89,660 | $80,979 | 17,690 |
| HI | $85,420 | $77,689 | 660 |
| OR | $84,350 | $81,607 | 2,320 |
| NJ | $82,690 | $75,998 | 4,310 |
| VT | $81,140 | $82,831 | 250 |
| CT | $79,900 | $77,116 | 1,650 |
| WA | $78,570 | $73,421 | 5,180 |
| NV | $78,470 | $78,486 | 1,160 |
| NH | $78,260 | $75,131 | 590 |
| UT | $78,150 | $79,048 | 1,750 |
| MD | $76,440 | $72,828 | 4,750 |
| MA | $76,440 | $72,279 | 7,220 |
| RI | $75,390 | $73,709 | 630 |
| ID | $74,500 | $78,015 | 750 |

38 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 53 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/geriatric-care-manager/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/geriatric-care-manager.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 194,800 in the 2025–2035 base year to 211,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 16,500 jobs, or +8.5%. Much faster than average: 8.5% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 16,900 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:** Master's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Internship/residency.

### 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 70.4% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 14.8% |
| Post-Master's Certificate | 11.1% |
| First Professional Degree | 3.7% |

## What the work involves

- Assess older adults' health, safety, finances and support
- Write and update individualized care plans
- Arrange and monitor home care and other services
- Attend medical appointments and coordinate with providers
- Help families choose assisted living or memory care
- Manage transitions after hospital and rehab stays
- Mediate family disagreements about care
- Respond to crises and coordinate urgent care

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.1 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.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Evaluation — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Psychology — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Sociology and Anthropology — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 4.0 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), Conventional (C).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 6.92 |
| I — Investigative | 4.24 |
| C — Conventional | 3.87 |
| E — Enterprising | 3.68 |
| A — Artistic | 2.34 |
| R — Realistic | 1.96 |

### 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 | 72.0 |
| ENFJ | 71.9 |
| ESFP | 66.6 |
| ENFP | 60.1 |
| ISFJ | 60.0 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ, ENFJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Healthcare Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/healthcare-social-worker) — median $67,880
- [Mental Health and Substance Abuse Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mental-health-and-substance-abuse-social-worker) — median $60,280
- [Mental Health Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/mental-health-counselor) — median $60,320
- [School Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/school-social-worker) — median $59,550
- [Marriage and Family Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/marriage-and-family-therapist) — median $66,940
- [Rehabilitation Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/rehabilitation-counselor) — median $46,850
- [Social and Human Service Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-and-human-service-assistant) — median $45,930
- [Clinical Psychologist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clinical-psychologist) — median $100,580
- [Community Health Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/community-health-worker) — median $51,850
- [Substance Abuse and Behavioral Disorder Counselor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/substance-abuse-and-behavioral-disorder-counselor) — median $60,320

## 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/geriatric-care-manager