---
title: "Military Chaplain"
description: "Serves as a commissioned officer providing religious services, counseling and moral guidance to service members and their families."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/military-chaplain"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Military Chaplain

**Category:** Community and Social Service · **SOC code:** 21-2011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 21-2011.00

Serves as a commissioned officer providing religious services, counseling and moral guidance to service members and their families.

Also advertised as: Army Chaplain; Navy Chaplain; Air Force Chaplain; Chaplain Corps Officer; Unit Ministry Team Chaplain.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $60,810 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $29.24/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $37,860 to $98,890, with the middle half between $48,260 and $76,640
- **Total US employment:** 57,200
- **Typical entry education:** Master's
- **Preparation required:** Considerable preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Five: Extensive Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +2.4% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 19,200 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 50/100 — 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 57,200 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $37,860 |
| 25th | $48,260 |
| 50th (median) | $60,810 |
| 75th | $76,640 |
| 90th | $98,890 |
| Mean (average) | $66,860 |

### 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 | $80,830 | $75,533 | 1,060 |
| CA | $77,710 | $70,186 | 7,110 |
| NV | $73,910 | $73,926 | 210 |
| MA | $72,190 | $68,260 | 840 |
| NJ | $65,500 | $60,199 | 1,460 |
| NH | $65,200 | $62,593 | 100 |
| VT | $64,950 | $66,304 | 50 |
| DC | $64,800 | $58,962 | 310 |
| ME | $64,340 | $66,296 | 160 |
| NM | $64,100 | $69,514 | 270 |
| CO | $63,700 | $61,813 | 440 |
| CT | $63,470 | $61,259 | 900 |
| DE | $63,260 | $63,382 | 120 |
| OR | $63,140 | $61,087 | 3,850 |
| AZ | $61,900 | $61,484 | 1,070 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/military-chaplain/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/military-chaplain.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 242,000 in the 2025–2035 base year to 247,800 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 5,700 jobs, or +2.4%. Slower than average: 2.4% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 19,200 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:** Moderate-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 |
| --- | --- |
| Master's Degree | 47.8% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 18.3% |
| Some College Courses | 15.2% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 12.2% |
| Doctoral Degree | 5.1% |
| First Professional Degree | 1.3% |

## What the work involves

- Lead worship services and religious rites for service members
- Provide confidential counseling on stress, grief and personal problems
- Arrange religious support for members of all faith groups
- Advise commanders on morale, ethics and religious issues
- Deploy with units and minister in field and combat settings
- Perform weddings, memorial services and funerals
- Assist with death notifications and family support
- Run suicide prevention and resilience programs

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Speaking — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 4.3 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 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.5 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 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Philosophy and Theology — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Therapy and Counseling — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Speech Clarity — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — 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), Enterprising (E), Artistic (A).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| S — Social | 5.94 |
| E — Enterprising | 4.36 |
| A — Artistic | 4.03 |
| C — Conventional | 2.89 |
| I — Investigative | 2.11 |
| R — Realistic | 2.10 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFJ | 84.3 |
| ESFP | 82.3 |
| ENFP | 81.1 |
| ESFJ | 74.1 |
| INFJ | 58.1 |

Best-fitting types: ENFJ, ESFP, ENFP.

## Related occupations

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

- [Clergy](https://nuecareer.com/careers/clergy) — median $60,810
- [Director, Religious Activity and Education](https://nuecareer.com/careers/director-religious-activity-and-education) — median $52,100
- [School Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/school-social-worker) — median $59,550
- [Educational, Guidance, and Career Counselor and Advisor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/educational-guidance-and-career-counselor-and-advisor) — median $64,330
- [Social and Human Service Assistant](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-and-human-service-assistant) — median $45,930
- [Social and Community Service Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/social-and-community-service-manager) — median $80,390
- [Philosophy and Religion Teacher, Postsecondary](https://nuecareer.com/careers/philosophy-and-religion-teacher-postsecondary) — median $80,260
- [Community Health Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/community-health-worker) — median $51,850
- [Marriage and Family Therapist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/marriage-and-family-therapist) — median $66,940
- [Healthcare Social Worker](https://nuecareer.com/careers/healthcare-social-worker) — median $67,880

## 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/military-chaplain