Security Guards 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 Security Guards ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $35,100. 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 1,241,770 jobs nationally, Security Guards make up 0.81% of U.S. employment as BLS measured it in May 2024. The map is uneven: California alone holds 185,510 of those jobs, the top three states hold 33.6%, and the deepest concentration sits in District of Columbia (location quotient 2.83, where 1.00 is the national average). A quotient above 2 usually signals a local industry cluster rather than evenly spread demand.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $29,780 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($59,580) is 2.0 times the 10th percentile ($29,800), a gap of $29,780 a year. The mean of $42,890 sitting above the median of $38,370 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

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 District of Columbia at $63,130; the jobs leader is California:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Security Guards stands number 26 by employment and number 731 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 35% less than its group median, and it supplies 34.0% of the group's 3,654,920 jobs. In 27 of the 51 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $38,370, 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 138,940 jobs, 11.2% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 391 metros BLS publishes for this occupation: where the jobs are, then where the money is, with the pay ranking restricted to metros employing at least 500 people in this occupation to keep small samples out of the lead.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Aguadilla, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $20,880 a year, against $76,610 in Idaho Falls, ID. The lowest-paying large metro and the highest are both real markets for this occupation; the difference between them is the geography premium, or penalty, in cash terms.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

Budget arithmetic on the median: $3,198 a month before tax, $1,476 biweekly, $738 weekly. Moving from the 25th percentile ($35,100) to the 75th ($46,660) is worth $11,560 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. To turn any of these gross figures into spendable money, run them through the paycheck calculator; to weigh an offer against your current role, use the salary calculator; to test a raise against prices, the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $42,207 would sit between the median ($38,370) and the 75th percentile ($46,660), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $35,100, is $3,270 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: Bailiffs, Fire Inspectors and Investigators, Animal Control Workers, Gambling Surveillance Officers and Gambling Investigators, Parking Enforcement Workers, Fish and Game Wardens. Medians there are computed identically, so the comparison is apples to apples; the full set lives on the Careers hub.