Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service 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 Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $28,840. 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

BLS counted 143,590 Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers jobs in May 2024, which is 0.09% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Wyoming, where the location quotient is 2.38, meaning the occupation holds 2.38 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 21,730 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 30.2% of the national total.

Read the ladder as a career path in numbers: $28,840 at the 25th percentile, $33,720 at the middle, $37,750 at the 75th. The full 10-to-90 range runs $19,740, a ratio of 1.8 to 1. Where a specific job offer lands on that range says more about the role's level than the occupation's headline median does.

Pay by state

The state spread for Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers runs from the $58,640 median in District of Columbia down through every other publishing state. Employment concentrates in California (21,730 jobs). The complete table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers stands number 213 by employment and number 812 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 42% less than its group median, and it supplies 3.9% of the group's 3,654,920 jobs. In 17 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $33,720, 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 10,320 jobs, 7.2% 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, Greenville-Anderson-Greer, SC posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $25,640 a year, against $47,830 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, $33,720 a year is $2,810 a month gross, $1,297 every two weeks, $648 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($28,840) to the 75th ($37,750) is worth $8,910 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 $2,810 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 $37,092 would sit between the median ($33,720) and the 75th percentile ($37,750), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $28,840, is $4,880 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

Compare the ladder above with the closest relatives in the survey: Private Detectives and Investigators, First-Line Supervisors of Protective Service Workers, All Other, Bailiffs, Fire Inspectors and Investigators, Animal Control Workers, Gambling Surveillance Officers and Gambling Investigators. The Careers hub carries the whole branch, group by group.