Salary by State and Occupation (2023)

BLS OEWS wage distributions for every U.S. state, sliced by 2-digit SOC occupational major group. Currently showing: Protective Service.

Written by Jere SalmistoReviewed by CalcFi EditorialLast reviewed 2026-05-21Methodology

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics^[1]program surveys ~200,000 establishments semi-annually and publishes state-level wage percentiles (P10, P25, P50, P75, P90) plus employment counts. Occupational groupings use the 2018 Standard Occupational Classification^[2] — this page exposes the 20 major (2-digit) groups. Pick one below.

Switch occupational major group

11 · Management 13 · Business & Financial Ops 15 · Computer & Mathematical 17 · Architecture & Engineering 19 · Life, Physical & Social Sciences 21 · Community & Social Service

Highest Median

District of Columbia

$65,240

Lowest Median

Mississippi

$36,140

OEWS Vintage

May 2023

BLS state tables

Wage by State — Protective Service

Rank	State	Median (P50) ▼	P10	P90	Employment
1	District of Columbia	$65,240^[1]	$34,270	$122,820	28,310
2	Alaska	$64,110^[1]	$35,450	$108,850	8,800
3	Massachusetts	$64,060^[1]	$36,810	$102,320	80,480
4	Rhode Island	$61,000^[1]	$31,720	$88,460	12,850
5	Washington	$58,520^[1]	$36,820	$114,330	68,910
6	Oregon	$58,350^[1]	$35,000	$96,860	35,100
7	Minnesota	$58,260^[1]	$32,910	$100,370	45,860
8	Connecticut	$57,510^[1]	$33,270	$99,950	37,090
9	Maryland	$56,490^[1]	$31,940	$104,500	74,010
10	New Hampshire	$55,080^[1]	$33,660	$86,170	12,280
11	Nebraska	$54,940^[1]	$30,850	$89,570	16,180
12	Wisconsin	$54,660^[1]	$29,340	$87,830	50,470
13	Colorado	$54,250^[1]	$33,890	$105,100	60,600
14	North Dakota	$53,890^[1]	$30,810	$84,320	7,540
15	Montana	$52,350^[1]	$30,480	$83,180	9,060
16	New York	$51,430^[1]	$34,500	$107,520	270,040
17	Hawaii	$51,220^[1]	$30,250	$109,080	19,720
18	Arizona	$50,940^[1]	$31,690	$88,420	81,980
19	New Jersey	$50,800^[1]	$31,420	$125,720	112,770
20	Idaho	$50,620^[1]	$30,120	$86,730	14,030
21	Illinois	$49,980^[1]	$31,440	$104,580	147,240
22	Vermont	$49,710^[1]	$33,100	$84,030	4,200
23	California	$49,370^[1]	$35,730	$129,190	427,100
24	Wyoming	$49,190^[1]	$29,220	$78,080	6,450
25	Virginia	$49,000^[1]	$30,170	$89,770	102,360
26	Ohio	$48,980^[1]	$27,890	$90,830	115,020
27	Utah	$48,950^[1]	$28,570	$88,740	25,740
28	Maine	$48,900^[1]	$33,410	$75,190	11,460
29	South Dakota	$48,790^[1]	$29,840	$76,100	6,930
30	Iowa	$48,650^[1]	$29,270	$86,300	22,650
31	Delaware	$48,340^[1]	$30,810	$92,160	9,330
32	Michigan	$48,150^[1]	$29,550	$82,720	77,270
33	Indiana	$47,870^[1]	$28,940	$80,660	61,830
34	Texas	$46,920^[1]	$27,540	$89,870	298,740
35	Kansas	$45,660^[1]	$28,570	$81,880	28,740
36	Pennsylvania	$45,430^[1]	$28,770	$96,990	128,540
37	New Mexico	$44,690^[1]	$29,200	$80,710	24,530
38	Missouri	$44,630^[1]	$29,530	$83,500	58,340
39	Georgia	$43,850^[1]	$29,090	$75,680	113,030
40	North Carolina	$43,720^[1]	$28,360	$74,830	104,860
41	Nevada	$43,630^[1]	$29,230	$89,440	47,060
42	Tennessee	$42,590^[1]	$28,830	$72,050	74,340
43	Florida	$42,100^[1]	$29,180	$99,230	257,100
44	Oklahoma	$41,960^[1]	$27,090	$88,240	38,540
45	South Carolina	$41,750^[1]	$27,910	$67,230	49,070
46	Arkansas	$40,620^[1]	$28,390	$68,070	25,970
47	Alabama	$39,600^[1]	$23,790	$68,520	48,270
48	Louisiana	$39,100^[1]	$23,860	$66,100	53,690
49	West Virginia	$38,890^[1]	$22,720	$65,500	16,830
50	Kentucky	$37,250^[1]	$26,380	$65,650	41,080
51	Mississippi	$36,140^[1]	$22,880	$58,140	31,960

P10 / P50 / P90 are annual wage percentiles from BLS OEWS. Employment is the state-level headcount for the SOC major group at the OEWS publication date. A few small-employment cells may be suppressed by BLS for confidentiality.

How to Read OEWS

Why Percentiles, Not Averages

OEWS reports wage percentiles because the wage distribution for most occupational groups is right-skewed — a handful of high earners pull the arithmetic mean well above the median. P50 is the experience the median worker actually has; P10 is the bottom decile; P90 is the top decile (but not the very top, which BLS caps at $240k).

Cross-Check With Cost of Living

A $110k Computer & Mathematical median in San Francisco is not the same as a $110k median in Austin — the BEA housing RPP is ~2× higher on the coast. Always pair OEWS with BEA RPP before making a relocation decision.

Major-Group vs Detailed SOC

This page uses 2-digit SOC major groups (e.g., 15-0000“Computer and Mathematical”). BLS also publishes the full 6-digit detailed SOC (e.g., 15-1252Software Developers) with narrower wage bands — those sit in the state's detailed OEWS table, which CalcFi's pSEO salary pages consume separately.

How we compute this — methodology

This page calls listStateSalary()from CalcFi's data repository. Each StateSalaryContext row has a record-level source: SourceRef (all wage fields come from the same OEWS release), plus a nested occupations[] array keyed by SOC 2-digit code. The query-string ?soc= filters to one row per state for the chosen occupational group.

Refresh cadence:BLS publishes OEWS state tables annually in May (for the previous May survey period). That's the slowest of CalcFi's data feeds — expect a one-year lag. The retrievedAt date shown above reflects the last ETL fetch, not the vintage year itself (shown in the highlights tile).

Known limits:some small employment cells are suppressed by BLS (marked “—”). OEWS covers non-farm wage and salary workers and excludes the self-employed — so Schedule-C and 1099 income isn't in these numbers.

Sources

U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) — OEWS state-level wage estimates, May 2023 vintage; P10 / P50 / P90 annual wages. www.bls.gov/oes/. Retrieved 2026-05-21. License: Public domain (U.S. federal government).
U.S. Office of Management and Budget — Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) — 2018 SOC system — 2-digit major groups used throughout this page. www.bls.gov/soc/. Retrieved 2026-05-21.

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