Broadcast Technicians 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 ($29,190) to the 90th ($115,400). 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

With 21,080 jobs nationally, Broadcast Technicians make up 0.01% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 2,520 of those jobs, the top three states hold 26.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in District of Columbia (location quotient 2.97, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $86,210 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($115,400) is 4.0 times the 10th percentile ($29,190), a gap of $86,210 a year. The mean of $64,220 sitting above the median of $53,920 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 2,520 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, District of Columbia would lead at $96,520. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Broadcast Technicians stands number 547 by employment and number 479 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 19% less than its group median, and it supplies 1.1% of the group's 1,989,300 jobs. In 14 of the 47 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $53,920, 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

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 1,840 jobs, 8.7% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Atlanta-Sandy Springs-Roswell, GA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $52,990 a year, against $93,850 in Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $53,920 works out to $4,493 a month before taxes, $2,074 per biweekly paycheck, and $1,037 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($36,900) to the 75th ($80,390) is worth $43,490 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 $59,312 would sit between the median ($53,920) and the 75th percentile ($80,390), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $36,900, is $17,020 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

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Court Reporters and Simultaneous Captioners, Music Directors and Composers, Set and Exhibit Designers, Lighting Technicians, Fine Artists, Including Painters, Sculptors, and Illustrators, Designers, All Other. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.