First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $80,940. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

With 153,130 jobs nationally, First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives make up 0.10% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 12,980 of those jobs, the top three states hold 22.8%, and the deepest concentration sits in Maryland (location quotient 2.77, 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 $62,370 or less, and one in ten earns $165,050 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.6 to 1 and the annual gap is $102,680. The mean ($110,990) versus median ($105,980) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

California posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $162,740, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives stands number 201 by employment and number 94 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Protective Service Occupations, the group median wage is $58,610 across 24 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 81% more than its group median, and it supplies 4.2% of the group's 3,654,920 jobs. In 18 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $105,980, 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 13,930 jobs, 9.1% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $49,950 a year, against $179,750 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, 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 First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives paycheck, gross, is $4,076 every two weeks on an annual $105,980, which is $8,832 a month and $2,038 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($80,940) to the 75th ($133,520) is worth $52,580 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Gross is a starting point, not a budget: the paycheck calculator nets it down by state, an offer comparison lives in the salary calculator, and the raise vs inflation calculator separates a real raise from a nominal one.

To place a real offer: a salary of $116,578 would sit between the median ($105,980) and the 75th percentile ($133,520), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $80,940, is $25,040 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Protective Service Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Firefighters, Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers, Detectives and Criminal Investigators, First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers, Crossing Guards and Flaggers, Protective Service Workers, All Other. The full directory is on the Careers hub.