Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Percentiles answer the question a single average cannot: where would a given Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance offer sit among all 211,000 workers doing this job? The survey top-codes at $239,200+ and withholds unreliable cells, shown as n/p in the table.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 211,000, or 0.14% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 24,580 jobs; the top three states sum to 28.9% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Nevada posts a location quotient of 1.58, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $41,530 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($76,130) is 2.2 times the 10th percentile ($34,600), a gap of $41,530 a year. The mean of $53,150 sitting above the median of $48,880 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

The state spread for Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance runs from the $72,950 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (24,580 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Dispatchers, Except Police, Fire, and Ambulance stands number 158 by employment and number 549 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Office and Administrative Support Occupations, the group median wage is $47,850 across 54 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 2% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.2% of the group's 18,218,060 jobs. In 24 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $48,880, 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 12,070 jobs, 5.7% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $25,180 a year, against $64,410 in Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA. 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

As a household number, $48,880 a year is $4,073 a month gross, $1,880 every two weeks, $940 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($40,240) to the 75th ($61,520) is worth $21,280 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. The next step from a gross figure is a net one: run the $4,073 monthly figure through the paycheck calculator applies your state's taxes, the salary calculator compares two offers in any unit, and the raise vs inflation calculator tells you whether a nominal raise is a real one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $53,768 would sit between the median ($48,880) and the 75th percentile ($61,520), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $40,240, is $8,640 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Office and Administrative Support Occupations

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan, Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks, Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs, Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Information and Record Clerks, All Other, Data Entry Keyers. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.