First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers worker at that point in the distribution, so $76,640 at the 75th percentile means three quarters of the occupation earns less. Figures BLS cannot publish appear as n/p, and its top code prints as $239,200+.

Employment and concentration

With 29,530 jobs nationally, First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers make up 0.02% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 10,680 of those jobs, the top three states hold 44.4%, and the deepest concentration sits in Idaho (location quotient 3.44, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

One in ten workers in this field earns $39,610 or less, and one in ten earns $90,840 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.3 to 1 and the annual gap is $51,230. The mean ($63,360) versus median ($59,330) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 10,680 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, Maryland would lead at $76,670. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, First-Line Supervisors of Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Workers stands number 484 by employment and number 419 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations, the group median wage is $46,710 across 13 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 27% more than its group median, and it supplies 6.7% of the group's 440,980 jobs. In 27 of the 49 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $59,330, 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

Salinas, CA is the largest metro employer with 1,220 jobs, 4.1% 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, Visalia, CA posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $55,580 a year, against $66,020 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

As a household number, $59,330 a year is $4,944 a month gross, $2,282 every two weeks, $1,141 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($47,660) to the 75th ($76,640) is worth $28,980 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 $4,944 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 $65,263 would sit between the median ($59,330) and the 75th percentile ($76,640), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $47,660, is $11,670 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Farming, Fishing, and Forestry Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: Graders and Sorters, Agricultural Products, Logging Equipment Operators, Agricultural Inspectors, Forest and Conservation Workers, Agricultural Workers, All Other, Fallers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.