Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service 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 ($29,820) to the 90th ($60,940). 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

BLS counted 35,730 Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service jobs in May 2024, which is 0.02% of all U.S. employment in the survey. Work is most concentrated in Hawaii, where the location quotient is 2.59, meaning the occupation holds 2.59 times its national share of local jobs. California employs the most people outright, 7,170 of them, and the three largest state employers together account for 36.3% of the national total.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $31,120 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($60,940) is 2.0 times the 10th percentile ($29,820), a gap of $31,120 a year. The mean of $42,130 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

Hawaii posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $57,220, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service stands number 452 by employment and number 732 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Office and Administrative Support Occupations, the group median wage is $47,850 across 54 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 20% less than its group median, and it supplies 0.2% of the group's 18,218,060 jobs. In 18 of the 48 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

Los Angeles-Long Beach-Anaheim, CA is the largest metro employer with 2,320 jobs, 6.5% of the national total. Two rankings follow across the 163 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, San Juan-Bayamon-Caguas, PR posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $27,540 a year, against $58,260 in San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA. 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

The median Switchboard Operators, Including Answering Service paycheck, gross, is $1,476 every two weeks on an annual $38,370, which is $3,198 a month and $738 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($34,250) to the 75th ($46,330) is worth $12,080 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 $42,207 would sit between the median ($38,370) and the 75th percentile ($46,330), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $34,250, is $4,120 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Office and Administrative Support Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Bill and Account Collectors, Interviewers, Except Eligibility and Loan, Payroll and Timekeeping Clerks, Eligibility Interviewers, Government Programs, Legal Secretaries and Administrative Assistants, Information and Record Clerks, All Other. The full directory is on the Careers hub.