Crossing Guards and Flaggers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. North Dakota pays crossing guards and flaggers best, at $60,230. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $57,100 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for crossing guards and flaggers is also the real leader: North Dakota at $60,230, holding through tax and through price deflation to $57,100. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$38,100
People doing it
94,360
Highest paid
$60,230
ND
Best off, really
$57,100
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,840
Highest tenth
$61,690
Lowest, really
$25,118
LA
States with data
49
National average
$43,350
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $25,118 to $57,100.
- Just 94,360 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 49 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $38,100. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, North Dakota pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in crossing guards and flaggers is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $25,118 to $57,100 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 94,360 are employed nationally in crossing guards and flaggers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for crossing guards and flaggers 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: Crossing Guards and Flaggers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,840 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $38,100 |
| Top tenth earn over | $61,690 |
| This salary | $38,100 |
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 Crossing Guards and Flaggers
The national median for this job
$38,100around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,840 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $38,100 |
| Top tenth | $61,690 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Crossing Guards and Flaggers, state by state
The national median for this job
49states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $25,450 |
|---|---|
| Highest | North Dakota · $60,230 |
| Spread | $34,780 |
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 | $33,350 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $34,320 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $60,230 | $50,575 | $57,100 |
| SD | $46,940 | $39,896 | $45,288 |
| WY | $47,070 | $40,001 | $44,030 |
| MN | $48,100 | $39,074 | $39,702 |
| IA | $41,240 | $34,361 | $38,709 |
| VT | $45,410 | $37,402 | $38,704 |
| WA | $48,940 | $41,503 | $38,230 |
| NH | $45,980 | $39,125 | $37,140 |
| CA | $50,610 | $41,616 | $36,965 |
| ID | $40,060 | $33,098 | $36,203 |
| NE | $37,990 | $31,680 | $35,054 |
| OR | $47,110 | $36,461 | $34,817 |
| OH | $37,440 | $31,950 | $34,799 |
| ME | $40,140 | $33,015 | $34,002 |
| IN | $37,440 | $31,188 | $33,832 |
| NY | $44,730 | $36,302 | $33,730 |
| TN | $35,960 | $31,074 | $33,588 |
| CT | $41,950 | $34,384 | $33,161 |
| MA | $43,460 | $35,247 | $32,564 |
| KS | $35,440 | $28,967 | $32,198 |
| MI | $36,540 | $30,238 | $32,105 |
| IL | $38,990 | $31,723 | $32,091 |
| WI | $35,580 | $29,868 | $32,082 |
| NJ | $41,600 | $34,855 | $32,011 |
| HI | $42,780 | $34,707 | $31,956 |
| KY | $34,450 | $28,772 | $31,804 |
| AZ | $37,440 | $31,730 | $31,383 |
| MO | $33,560 | $28,505 | $31,065 |
| CO | $37,620 | $31,461 | $31,032 |
| WV | $32,800 | $27,719 | $30,877 |
| VA | $37,560 | $30,960 | $30,730 |
| UT | $35,480 | $29,109 | $30,641 |
| PA | $35,810 | $29,854 | $30,619 |
| MT | $32,600 | $27,599 | $30,582 |
| DC | $40,800 | $33,681 | $30,397 |
| AR | $30,830 | $26,270 | $30,367 |
| DE | $36,500 | $30,049 | $30,275 |
| NC | $33,730 | $28,445 | $30,216 |
| SC | $32,690 | $28,094 | $30,152 |
| NM | $31,460 | $27,060 | $29,938 |
| FL | $35,730 | $30,889 | $29,858 |
| TX | $33,350 | $28,977 | $29,819 |
| GA | $34,230 | $28,575 | $29,550 |
| MD | $35,850 | $29,646 | $28,516 |
| NV | $31,480 | $27,474 | $28,330 |
| OK | $28,610 | $24,381 | $27,616 |
| AL | $29,190 | $24,422 | $27,145 |
| RI | $31,200 | $26,499 | $26,130 |
| LA | $25,450 | $22,191 | $25,118 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of crossing guards and flaggers earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $38,100.
- One filer, no dependants, nothing paid into a pension before tax — that is the household behind every take-home figure for crossing guards and flaggers. 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, North Dakota keeps the most at $50,575.
- The price adjustment for crossing guards and flaggers 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 — Louisiana anchors the bottom at $25,118. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for crossing guards and flaggers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $38,100, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- The household modeled for crossing guards and flaggers 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 North Dakota retains the most, $50,575. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for crossing guards and flaggers 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.