First-Line Supervisors of Security Workers 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 Security Workers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $46,070. 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 70,310 jobs nationally, First-Line Supervisors of Security Workers make up 0.05% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 8,940 of those jobs, the top three states hold 29.5%, and the deepest concentration sits in Nevada (location quotient 3.21, 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 $37,800 or less, and one in ten earns $93,930 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 2.5 to 1 and the annual gap is $56,130. The mean ($62,990) versus median ($58,610) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Every state with a publishable estimate is in this table, 51 of them, sorted by jobs. The pay leader by median is Minnesota at $83,110; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, First-Line Supervisors of Security Workers stands number 327 by employment and number 427 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 0% more than its group median, and it supplies 1.9% of the group's 3,654,920 jobs. In 22 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $58,610, 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 7,330 jobs, 10.4% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $29,270 a year, against $83,260 in Minneapolis-St. Paul-Bloomington, MN-WI. 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 First-Line Supervisors of Security Workers paycheck, gross, is $2,254 every two weeks on an annual $58,610, which is $4,884 a month and $1,127 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($46,070) to the 75th ($74,700) is worth $28,630 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 $64,471 would sit between the median ($58,610) and the 75th percentile ($74,700), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $46,070, is $12,540 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

Sibling occupations in Protective Service Occupations: Animal Control Workers, Gambling Surveillance Officers and Gambling Investigators, Parking Enforcement Workers, Fish and Game Wardens, Transit and Railroad Police, Forest Fire Inspectors and Prevention Specialists. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.