Correctional Officers and Jailers
What the pay figures show
- Two answers for this job. Best paid: California, at $96,370. Tax does not change that. Best off: New Jersey, at $65,808 once local prices count. Tax was not what separated them. Rent was.
- California's $96,370 median for correctional officers and jailers survives the tax adjustment intact, so state income tax is not a differentiator in this occupation's geography. It does not survive price deflation: New Jersey takes the top position at $65,808. Housing is where regional price variation concentrates, which is why the reordering appears at this step and not the previous one.
Compare this career across states
Choose your filing status and local taxes, compare pay, and keep a shortlist.Compare wage and personal-pay outcomes by state, with selected resident local taxes and saved career choices.
Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$58,940
People doing it
380,500
Highest paid
$96,370
CA
Best off, really
$65,808
NJ, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$42,760
Highest tenth
$93,220
Lowest, really
$36,469
MS
States with data
49
National average
$63,630
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.88%
NJ, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Geography does a lot of the work in this job. Pay roughly doubles between the lowest state and the highest. Tax and prices narrow that gap. They come nowhere near closing it — the real range is still $36,469 up to $65,808.
- Roughly 380,500 people hold this job nationally, earning $58,940 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $58,940. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, California pays most.
- The nominal spread for correctional officers and jailers approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $36,469 to $65,808, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- 380,500 are employed nationally in correctional officers and jailers, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for correctional officers and jailers in 49 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Correctional Officers and Jailers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $42,760 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $58,940 |
| Top tenth earn over | $93,220 |
| This salary | $58,940 |
Positions between the published tenth, quarter, half, three-quarter and ninetieth points are estimated by straight line.
Where these numbers come from
| BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS), May 2025 estimates, time-series bulk download (oe.data.0.Current) | as of 2025-05-01 |
|---|
Steps in Correctional Officers and Jailers
The national median for this job
$58,940around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $42,760 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $58,940 |
| Top tenth | $93,220 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Correctional Officers and Jailers, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $38,720 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $96,370 |
| Spread | $57,650 |
One dot per state that publishes this job. A missing state means suppressed data, not zero pay.
Best paid, and best off
The national median for this job
| Texas pays | $52,670 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $54,201 |
Median pay against the same pay once BEA price parities are applied.
Every state, three ways
Sorted by what the money is actually worth. "Kept" is take-home for a single filer after federal, FICA and state income tax. "Really worth" divides that by the state's own price level, so a dollar in each row buys the same thing. Tap a state to put your own salary into it. States BLS does not publish for this job are absent — that means no published figure, not no work.
| State | Median pay | Kept after tax | Really worth |
|---|---|---|---|
| NJ | $94,770 | $71,654 | $65,808 |
| NV | $76,490 | $62,641 | $64,591 |
| CA | $96,370 | $71,756 | $63,737 |
| WI | $73,470 | $57,609 | $61,881 |
| IL | $79,190 | $60,765 | $61,469 |
| MA | $86,310 | $65,554 | $60,564 |
| WA | $79,460 | $64,730 | $59,625 |
| OR | $83,690 | $60,933 | $58,186 |
| AK | $71,360 | $59,032 | $58,036 |
| NE | $63,380 | $50,926 | $56,349 |
| UT | $67,290 | $53,174 | $55,972 |
| NY | $76,820 | $59,322 | $55,118 |
| MI | $64,020 | $51,150 | $54,309 |
| OH | $59,370 | $48,967 | $53,335 |
| MN | $66,040 | $52,276 | $53,117 |
| PA | $63,460 | $51,222 | $52,535 |
| DE | $65,880 | $51,998 | $52,389 |
| SD | $53,040 | $44,798 | $50,852 |
| WY | $54,780 | $46,196 | $50,849 |
| ND | $52,460 | $44,332 | $50,051 |
| HI | $69,570 | $53,928 | $49,654 |
| CT | $64,750 | $51,395 | $49,567 |
| CO | $62,140 | $50,084 | $49,401 |
| KS | $56,120 | $44,429 | $49,385 |
| MD | $64,250 | $51,117 | $49,167 |
| IA | $53,040 | $43,394 | $48,885 |
| NH | $61,360 | $51,483 | $48,871 |
| WV | $52,890 | $43,111 | $48,023 |
| ID | $53,580 | $43,245 | $47,301 |
| TN | $50,940 | $43,110 | $46,598 |
| TX | $52,670 | $44,500 | $45,794 |
| VT | $53,810 | $43,870 | $45,398 |
| AZ | $54,970 | $45,377 | $44,881 |
| MT | $49,180 | $40,141 | $44,481 |
| NC | $50,550 | $41,289 | $43,859 |
| NM | $47,940 | $39,606 | $43,818 |
| ME | $52,730 | $42,309 | $43,574 |
| IN | $48,340 | $39,625 | $42,984 |
| SC | $47,890 | $39,800 | $42,714 |
| OK | $45,690 | $37,336 | $42,290 |
| AL | $46,660 | $37,674 | $41,874 |
| FL | $49,710 | $42,122 | $40,716 |
| VA | $50,140 | $40,345 | $40,045 |
| GA | $47,520 | $38,590 | $39,907 |
| AR | $40,330 | $33,552 | $38,784 |
| MO | $42,620 | $35,359 | $38,534 |
| KY | $42,310 | $34,813 | $38,481 |
| LA | $39,850 | $33,390 | $37,795 |
| MS | $38,720 | $31,835 | $36,469 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $58,940 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for this job. It is the simplest case on purpose, so the states can be compared against each other rather than against each other's family circumstances. City income taxes are not counted. On that household, California keeps the most at $71,756.
- The price adjustment for this job uses a statewide figure, and states are not uniform. A city and a rural county in the same state can differ more from each other than two states do, so treat the real-terms comparison as a direction rather than a precise answer — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $36,469. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for correctional officers and jailers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $58,940. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- The household modeled for correctional officers and jailers is a single filer, standard deduction, no dependants, no pre-tax contributions. Holding the household constant is what makes the interstate comparison meaningful; it also means the absolute figures overstate liability for most real filers. On that basis California retains the most, $71,756. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for correctional officers and jailers deflate take-home by a statewide regional price parity, which conceals substantial intra-state variation — metropolitan and non-metropolitan price levels within one state frequently differ by more than two states differ from each other. The wage and price series also carry different reference periods, as each is published on its own schedule, so the adjustment is directionally sound rather than precisely dated.