Genetic Counselor job description
1,485 verified openings in Physicians & Advanced Practice
Fewer than four thousand people hold this job in the United States. BLS counted 3,740 genetic counselors in May 2025 and reported a median of $100,040; the bottom tenth of the published range starts at $78,270 and the top tenth at $138,760. The work is risk assessment for inherited conditions, genetic disorders and birth defects among them, carried out for patients and families and for the physicians who referred them.
Core Duties and Responsibilities
Interpreting laboratory results and telling patients or physicians what they mean is what respondents rate most important, at 4.91 out of 5. Almost level with it is walking families through testing options and their risks, benefits, and limits, so the decision to test is genuinely theirs. Counselors analyze genetic information to identify people at risk of specific disorders, take comprehensive family medical histories, and write consultation reports that put complex genetics into terms a patient or a referring physician can act on. They explain procedures such as chorionic villus sampling, amniocentesis, and fetal blood sampling, and they practice by clinical area: obstetrics, pediatrics, oncology, and neurology.
Common Skills and Technologies
Reading outranks listening here, and the reading is journal literature and laboratory reports. Science appears in the skill list, and keeping current through the literature, colleagues, and professional conferences counts as a task in its own right. The named software is the Office suite and nothing more specialized; analytical or scientific software and medical software appear as categories with no brands attached.
Education, Training, and Career Path
Every O*NET survey respondent reported a master's degree, 100 percent of them, with no other credential appearing in the results. Job Zone Five applies, so graduate school is expected and employers assume the skills arrive with the hire. Certification is visible in the titles people report holding, certified genetic counselor among them, alongside prenatal and pediatric genetic counselor, reproductive genetic counseling coordinator, and medical science liaison.
Sources: O*NET 30.0, 29-9092.00 Genetic Counselors, https://www.onetonline.org/link/summary/29-9092.00. BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025, 29-9092, https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes299092.htm.