Recreation Workers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

The five rows are five different workers in the same occupation, from the 10th percentile ($25,640) to the 90th ($49,460). BLS suppresses cells that fail its reliability rules (n/p here) and caps the highest wages at $239,200+ a year or $115.00+ an hour; in this ladder that top code appears at the very top rows only.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 309,640, or 0.20% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 48,580 jobs; the top three states sum to 27.4% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: Arizona posts a location quotient of 1.84, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $23,820 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($49,460) is 1.9 times the 10th percentile ($25,640), a gap of $23,820 a year. The mean of $37,170 sitting above the median of $35,380 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

Sorted by employment, the table below puts California first at 48,580 jobs; sorted by median pay instead, District of Columbia would lead at $45,760. Both orderings are printed in one table:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Recreation Workers stands number 116 by employment and number 784 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Personal Care and Service Occupations, the group median wage is $37,320 across 32 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 5% less than its group median, and it supplies 9.8% of the group's 3,159,920 jobs. In 16 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $35,380, 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 19,070 jobs, 6.2% 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $24,890 a year, against $52,950 in San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA. 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

As a household number, $35,380 a year is $2,948 a month gross, $1,361 every two weeks, $680 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($30,460) to the 75th ($41,120) is worth $10,660 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 $2,948 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 $38,918 would sit between the median ($35,380) and the 75th percentile ($41,120), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $30,460, is $4,920 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Personal Care and Service Occupations

The occupations BLS groups with this one, by size: First-Line Supervisors of Gambling Services Workers, Animal Trainers, Barbers, Locker Room, Coatroom, and Dressing Room Attendants, Gambling Service Workers, All Other, Shampooers. Every one of the 826 published occupations is indexed on the Careers hub.