Genetic counselor salary in industry vs clinical and the gap is getting wider

My wife is a genetic counselor so I have a front row seat to this whole situation, hope it's ok to post on her behalf since she doesn't use Reddit.

She did her MS in genetic counseling, got certified, spent 3 years in a hospital genetics clinic making 72k. Which for a masters degree with board certification in a healthcare role felt low even when she started. After 3 years the hospital bumped her to 78k and told her that was "at the top of the band" for her position. The band.

Meanwhile she started seeing job postings from biotech and pharma companies for genetic counselors in roles like variant classification, clinical genomics, medical affairs, and patient engagement. The salary ranges on these postings were 95-130k. For the same credential. We actually thought some of them were fake postings at first because the number gap was that big.

She ended up applying to a couple and got an offer from a diagnostics company at 118k. When she told her hospital she was leaving they suddenly found room in the budget to offer 95k to retain her. Funny how that works.

We spent a lot of time during her job search trying to figure out what the genetic counselor salary landscape actually looks like because the data is terrible. NSGC does a salary survey but it comes out once every 2 years and skews heavily toward clinical roles. Glassdoor had maybe 20 entries total. We found better industry-specific data on levels.fyi and supplemented with some recruiter conversations and a Facebook group for GCs in industry. Between all of that we figured out clinical GC pay is roughly 65-90k and industry GC pay is 95-140k depending on role type and company size.

The frustrating thing is she went through 6 years of training (4 yr undergrad + 2 yr MS + certification) for a role where the clinical salary has barely moved in a decade. Meanwhile the industry demand for GCs has exploded because of the genomics boom and every diagnostics and pharma company wants someone who can translate variant data for clinicians and patients.

If you're a genetic counselor reading this and you're still in clinical, just look at what's out there. The industry roles use the same core skills and the comp difference is significant enough to change your financial situation