Case Manager Salary in California 2026,
$89,660 Median | BLS Data by City

The published California figure is $89,660 a year, or $43.11 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025 — 32.1% above the national median of $67,880 — across a band from $54,220 at the 10th percentile to $134,880 at the 90th. The row is SOC 21-1022, Healthcare Social Workers, which is broader than the case-manager title; registered nurse case managers are counted elsewhere, under SOC 29-1141.

Napa at $142,940, then San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles $133,340, Vallejo $122,450, Santa Rosa-Petaluma $108,530 and San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara $107,170. The Bay Area technology metro comes last of the five, which is the tell: county behavioural health and public health departments pay on published salary schedules, and counties with strong systems and small workforces produce the highest figures.

Not to hold the title, but it is the main determinant of pay. The Board of Behavioral Sciences licenses clinical social workers, and an LCSW may assess, diagnose and provide psychotherapy; reaching that licence takes a master's degree, 3,000 supervised hours and state examinations. An unlicensed case manager can coordinate care, arrange services and carry a caseload without clinical scope. Both are in this wage row, and the licence is most of the distance from the $67,630 twenty-fifth percentile to the $118,740 seventy-fifth.

No, and the pay data is completely separate. Registered nurse case managers — common in hospital utilisation review, discharge planning and health plan settings — are classified under SOC 29-1141 with registered nurses, not on this row. In California, where registered nurse pay is among the highest in the country, that distinction is worth several tens of thousands of dollars, so anyone comparing case-management roles here should establish the discipline before comparing the numbers.

County behavioural health and public health departments, hospitals and health plans, roughly in that order at the top of the band. County employment is the reason the metro table looks the way it does: counties publish salary schedules with step increases and pension benefits, and they are large employers of licensed clinical social workers. Napa's $142,940 and San Luis Obispo-Paso Robles' $133,340 reflect that structure rather than any local private-sector premium.

Three reinforcing reasons. County systems are large, unionised employers paying on published schedules rather than to market. Dedicated behavioural health funding — including the state's Mental Health Services Act levy on very high incomes — has expanded county programmes and the roles inside them. And the LCSW pipeline is genuinely slow: a master's degree plus 3,000 supervised hours means supply cannot respond quickly to demand. A location quotient of 0.8 confirms the state is not oversupplied with these workers despite the pay.

It merges two populations with different scopes of practice and different pay: licensed clinical social workers and unlicensed case managers. It also excludes nurse case managers entirely, which is the version of the job many people mean when they search for it. And the top metro figures come from small county workforces — Napa's $142,940 rests on a limited sample, and the county salary schedules behind it apply to specific classifications rather than to anyone holding the case-manager title locally.

The LCSW licence, first and by a wide margin — it changes the scope of practice, not just the title, and it is the gate to supervision and to the upper half of the band. Then employer type: county behavioural health, hospitals and health plans pay above community non-profits, which is where much of the $54,220 to $67,630 range sits. Then setting acuity, since inpatient psychiatric, emergency department and hospice case management carry premiums. And then supervision itself, since licensed clinicians who supervise associates toward their own hours are scarce and separately compensated.