Behavioral Health Workforce Insights
The CARE Lab studies the behavioral health workforce as a system. We ask what we know about supply and demand, what we can predict about the pipeline that produces new clinicians, and where the bottlenecks are that keep communities under-resourced. We also build public tools, including an interactive view of the Texas workforce, so that others can examine the same data.
What We Know
National projections from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) show a psychology workforce shortage that is already underway and is projected to deepen.
What We Can Predict
The students who will apply for doctoral internships in the next three years are already enrolled, and their cohort sizes are public. The lab built a forecasting model that links entering cohort size to future internship demand. Across 16 prior years it predicted the non-match rate with a mean absolute percentage error of 2.1% (Callahan & Ruggero, in press). In both 2025 and 2026, 12.5% of applicants went unmatched, the largest shortfall since the 2000 to 2015 imbalance. Move the slider to see what the model projects for any year through 2041.
Where the Bottlenecks Are
One gate for every trainee
The doctoral internship is the capstone of training and a requirement for independent practice. Internship supply does not scale with doctoral enrollment decisions, so each year in which applicants outnumber positions delays trained psychologists from entering practice.
When funding is decided
Internship sites set their positions for the February match the summer before it. Positions paid for by federal Graduate Psychology Education (GPE) awards have been announced after the match they fund, and a match is binding, so a site unsure of its funding may hold positions back. The data fit that pattern. Positions fell by 52 in 2019 and by 134 in 2025, both years in which an award cycle changed over, and grew by 123 and 120 in 2022 and 2023, within an active award period (Callahan & Ruggero, in press). The next changeover is 2028, which the forecast marks as the worst near-term year.
Where trainees practice
In medicine, where residents train shapes where they go on to practice (Patterson et al., 2024). If the same holds for psychology, the places that build training capacity are the places that gain workforce, and the regions furthest below adequacy can least afford further delays.
The licensure examination
Licensure is the last gate. National examination pass rates differ by program type, specialty, and accreditation status (Stahl et al., 2025). In a study of early career psychologists, examination scores were associated with intellectual functioning and not with rated clinical competency (Saldaña et al., 2024).
What the Bottleneck Costs
Every applicant who goes unmatched is a trained clinician who reaches practice a year later. The forecast counts those delays in psychologist-years, where one psychologist-year is one trained psychologist kept out of practice for one year.
Explore the Training Pipeline Data
The same public data that feed the forecast are open for programs, applicants, and policymakers to examine.
Psychology Training Dashboards
Interactive views of doctoral psychology programs, enrollment, applicant pools, and student outcomes, alongside workforce projections.
Interactive Appendix
Generates and downloads figures and findings for a specific institution on demand, so that a program can see how its own data compare with the national picture.
Explore the Data: Behavioral Health Providers in Texas
This tool turns the 2023 Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council workforce survey into an interactive view of who delivers mental health care in Texas, where they practice, whom they serve, and what they plan to do next. Graphs shaded orange are filterable. Selecting a bar filters the other orange graphs on the page. Use the page buttons at the top of the tool to change views. The download icon at the lower right saves the data.
On a phone, use the full-screen icon at the lower right of the tool.
Data source and how to cite
The source data were extracted directly from the 2023 Texas Behavioral Health Executive Council Workforce Study Survey Data, which the council makes available to the public with unrestricted access at bhec.texas.gov/workforce-survey-and-data. The tool reflects that file as of 11/01/2024. Please read the data usage terms and conditions on the Texas NABORS Data Dashboards page before reusing the figures.
Cite as Texas NABORS Interactive Data Tool for the Behavioral Health Workforce in Texas (2024). Retrieved from www.texasnabors.org
What You Can Examine
- Where providers have their primary office, including urban, suburban, and rural settings.
- Provider career plans over the next five years, including reduced hours, retirement, and a change of career.
- The ethnicity, racial identity, and age ranges of the patients providers serve.
- Whether providers would recommend a career in behavioral health.
Related Work
- Callahan, J. L., & Ruggero, C. J. (in press). The psychology internship bottleneck: A validated forecast through 2041 and implications for a shrinking workforce. Clinical Psychological Science.
- Callahan, J. L. (2025). Training the workforce we need, where the need is greatest [Special section introduction]. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 19(4), 253-255. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000537
- Cicero, D. C., Vasquez, M. N., Levin-Aspenson, H. F., & Schwartz, J. L. (2025). Psychology workforce: National and regional shortfalls. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 19(4), 256-262. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000531
- Patterson, D. G., Shipman, S. A., Pollack, S. W., Andrilla, C. H. A., Schmitz, D., Peterson, L. E., & Longenecker, R. (2024). Growing a rural family physician workforce: The contributions of rural background and rural place of residency training. Health Services Research, 59(1), Article e14168. https://doi.org/10.1111/1475-6773.14168
- Ruggero, C. J., & Gum, M. A. (2025). The psychology workforce and disadvantaged communities: A brief report on state-level differences. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 19(4), 263-269. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000533
- Saldaña, S., Callahan, J. L., & Cox, R. J. (2024). The Examination for the Professional Practice of Psychology: An examination of construct validity. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 18(1), 42-48. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000459
- Stahl, L., Carroll, B., & Callahan, J. L. (2025). Examination for Professional Practice in Psychology performance across doctoral psychology programs: Associations with degree type, specialty area, and accreditation status. Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 19(4), 344-352. https://doi.org/10.1037/tep0000528
See also National Survey of Psychology Majors.