Athletes and Sports Competitors Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($24,960) to the 90th ($239,200 or more). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

The occupation employed 14,370 people in May 2024, 0.01% of every job BLS counted. Georgia is the largest employer at 2,390 jobs, and the leading three states between them hold 33.1% of the workforce. Concentration peaks in Georgia, whose location quotient of 5.28 says this work is 5.28 times as dense there as it is nationwide.

BLS top-codes or suppresses part of this occupation's national ladder, so the published center is the median of $62,360 and the mean of $259,750. The state table below is the more useful negotiating document: it shows how far the same job title travels across the 28 states with published estimates.

Pay by state

The state spread for Athletes and Sports Competitors runs from the $214,630 median in New Jersey down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in Georgia (2,390 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Athletes and Sports Competitors stands number 619 by employment and number 369 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations, the group median wage is $66,220 across 36 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 6% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.7% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 10 of the 21 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $62,360, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA is the largest metro employer with 1,860 jobs, 12.9% of the national total. Below, the biggest employers come first; the pay table after it only counts metros with 500 or more jobs in the occupation, so its leader is a real market and not a statistical artifact.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $209,330 a year, against $241,110 in Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA. Anyone relocating for this work should price the destination metro's table row, not the national median, before signing anything.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $62,360 works out to $5,197 a month before taxes, $2,398 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,199 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,750) to the 75th ($130,770) is worth $94,020 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $68,596 would sit between the median ($62,360) and the 75th percentile ($130,770), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,750, is $25,610 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Interpreters and Translators, Photographers, Art Directors, Writers and Authors, News Analysts, Reporters, and Journalists, Floral Designers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.