News

The 2024 Social Work Workforce Study Series provides hard data about the social work workforce that employers can use to advocate for the resources they need to serve their communities.

The Association of Social Work Boards convened a panel of social work educators to compare the content of one of the social work licensing exams alongside the competencies for academic accreditation.

ASWB is recruiting exam question writers from all license categories who represent a variety of experience and educational, geographic, and demographic backgrounds.

Achieving substantive change for our profession – for any system or institution – will require collaborative discussions and decision-making that is driven by data, not by conjecture, opinion, or personal agendas. This holds true regardless of the topic at hand.

ASWB has published a series of workforce study reports authored by Joy Kim, MSW, Ph.D., of the School of Social Work at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. These reports draw on a survey dataset collected by ASWB as part of the Social Work Census.

ASWB has published a revised edition of the Guide to the Social Work Licensing Exams for Educators and Supervisors and has expanded access to the available set of group review practice questions. These changes allow access to the exam materials for both social work educators and social work supervisors.

ASWB is seeking volunteers to participate on the standard setting panel for the next iteration of competence assessments for social work licensing. Deadline for applications is August 15, 2025.

As of June 2025, all states, provinces, and territories that use the social work licensing exams allow nonstandard testing arrangements for test-takers whose first language is not English.

Recently, coinciding with the vendor transition for exam administration, ASWB implemented a policy that provides the social work licensing exams in two distinct sections of 85 questions with a break in between the two sections. Each section has a time limit of two hours, and there are no structural differences in content distribution, content order, or difficulty between the sections.

Twenty-eight states have adopted the Social Work Licensure Compact as of June 2025. Compact Commission committees are meeting regularly to develop proposed rules, consider financial resources and needs, and plan next steps for implementation.