Gambling Surveillance Officers and Gambling Investigators Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

Read the ladder vertically: each row is the wage of the Gambling Surveillance Officers and Gambling Investigators worker at that point in the distribution, so $50,610 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

May 2024 employment stood at 10,000, or 0.01% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 1,400 jobs; the top three states sum to 35.7% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Oklahoma posts a location quotient of 12.17, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

One in ten workers in this field earns $34,020 or less, and one in ten earns $62,360 or more, so the top-to-bottom ratio is 1.8 to 1 and the annual gap is $28,340. The mean ($46,710) versus median ($43,900) comparison shows a right-skewed ladder where senior and specialist roles lift the average in this occupation.

Pay by state

Massachusetts posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $61,090, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Gambling Surveillance Officers and Gambling Investigators stands number 687 by employment and number 654 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 25% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 3,654,920 jobs. In 12 of the 33 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $43,900, 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

Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV is the largest metro employer with 690 jobs, 6.9% of the national total. Employment rank and pay rank are different lists: the second table re-sorts metros with at least 500 jobs in this occupation by mean pay, the floor keeping a handful of workers from posing as a market.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $49,500 a year, against $49,500 in Las Vegas-Henderson-North Las Vegas, NV. That is the metro effect in one line: identical job title, materially different pay, decided mostly by which labor market the job sits in.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median Gambling Surveillance Officers and Gambling Investigators paycheck, gross, is $1,688 every two weeks on an annual $43,900, which is $3,658 a month and $844 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($37,410) to the 75th ($50,610) is worth $13,200 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 $48,290 would sit between the median ($43,900) and the 75th percentile ($50,610), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $37,410, is $6,490 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: First-Line Supervisors of Police and Detectives, 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.