Firefighters
What the pay figures show
- Where are firefighters paid best? New York, at $100,960. That answer does not survive a pay stub. Take income tax out and Washington is ahead. Then count what things cost locally, and New York wins — the money there behaves like $69,629. Three questions. Three different states.
- The nominal leader for firefighters is New York at $100,960, but the ordering does not hold through either adjustment. Applying federal, FICA and state income tax moves the top position to Washington; deflating by regional price parity moves it again, to New York at $69,629 in national-average terms. ⚠️ Federal tax is not what does this — it is uniform across states and cannot change a ranking. State income tax reorders first, price level second, and the two act independently.
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
$59,280
People doing it
345,990
Highest paid
$100,960
NY
Best off, really
$69,629
NY, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$34,910
Highest tenth
$101,040
Lowest, really
$31,903
LA
States with data
50
National average
$63,630
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
107.63%
NY, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job roughly doubles depending on the state. That is a lot. Some of it is prices, because dear places pay more to make up for costing more. Most of it is not. In real money the range is still $31,903 to $69,629.
- Roughly 345,990 people hold this job nationally, earning $59,280 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $59,280 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. New York tops the ones that are.
- Interstate variation in firefighters pay approaches twofold nominally. The standard explanation — that high-wage states are merely high-cost states — is only partly supported here: after tax and price adjustment the range remains $31,903 to $69,629, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- 345,990 are employed nationally in firefighters, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for firefighters. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Firefighters
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $34,910 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $59,280 |
| Top tenth earn over | $101,040 |
| This salary | $59,280 |
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 Firefighters
The national median for this job
$59,280around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $34,910 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $59,280 |
| Top tenth | $101,040 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Firefighters, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $33,120 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New York · $100,960 |
| Spread | $67,840 |
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 | $60,180 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $61,930 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NY | $100,960 | $74,939 | $69,629 |
| WA | $94,520 | $75,325 | $69,384 |
| IL | $78,380 | $60,235 | $60,933 |
| PA | $73,460 | $58,254 | $59,748 |
| NJ | $84,130 | $64,846 | $59,556 |
| CT | $77,630 | $59,923 | $57,791 |
| CO | $74,170 | $58,454 | $57,657 |
| CA | $85,120 | $64,888 | $57,637 |
| NV | $66,570 | $55,662 | $57,395 |
| MD | $73,810 | $57,613 | $55,416 |
| IN | $62,780 | $50,801 | $55,109 |
| NE | $61,040 | $49,152 | $54,386 |
| WY | $58,090 | $48,855 | $53,777 |
| RI | $67,380 | $54,125 | $53,371 |
| OH | $59,370 | $48,967 | $53,335 |
| DC | $75,870 | $58,719 | $52,994 |
| MT | $59,310 | $47,805 | $52,973 |
| ND | $55,080 | $46,437 | $52,428 |
| MA | $72,800 | $56,725 | $52,407 |
| TX | $60,180 | $50,535 | $52,004 |
| IA | $55,810 | $45,514 | $51,274 |
| OR | $70,900 | $53,055 | $50,663 |
| AK | $58,830 | $49,450 | $48,616 |
| AZ | $59,280 | $48,732 | $48,199 |
| FL | $58,550 | $49,225 | $47,582 |
| MI | $54,640 | $44,012 | $46,730 |
| SD | $48,160 | $40,877 | $46,401 |
| VA | $58,670 | $46,708 | $46,361 |
| OK | $49,710 | $40,386 | $45,744 |
| NH | $56,620 | $47,674 | $45,255 |
| TN | $49,300 | $41,793 | $45,174 |
| MO | $49,080 | $40,246 | $43,859 |
| AL | $47,600 | $38,388 | $42,668 |
| ID | $47,320 | $38,547 | $42,162 |
| WI | $46,850 | $38,368 | $41,213 |
| UT | $48,310 | $38,847 | $40,891 |
| KS | $45,900 | $36,788 | $40,891 |
| ME | $48,290 | $39,041 | $40,209 |
| VT | $46,430 | $38,187 | $39,517 |
| GA | $46,550 | $37,859 | $39,151 |
| NM | $41,590 | $34,776 | $38,476 |
| SC | $42,570 | $35,822 | $38,446 |
| AR | $39,690 | $33,061 | $38,217 |
| DE | $46,710 | $37,686 | $37,970 |
| WV | $37,350 | $31,231 | $34,789 |
| KY | $37,150 | $30,847 | $34,098 |
| MS | $35,880 | $29,666 | $33,985 |
| NC | $37,940 | $31,660 | $33,631 |
| MN | $38,110 | $31,581 | $32,089 |
| LA | $33,120 | $28,185 | $31,903 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for firefighters as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $59,280, which means half of everyone doing this work earns less than that. Where you land depends on how long you have done it, who you do it for, and which city you do it in.
- Take-home figures for firefighters assume one person filing alone, with no dependants and nothing going into a pension before tax. Any of those lowers the tax and raises what you keep, so treat these as the plain case rather than your case. Local city income taxes are not included either, and in a few states those matter. In Washington, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $75,325.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for firefighters. Inside any state, a big city costs far more than a small town, so this is a fair way to compare states with each other and a poor way to price a specific move. The wage figures and the price figures are also from different years. At the bottom of the range sits Louisiana, on $31,903.
- These are distribution medians for firefighters, with a national value of $59,280. They describe a midpoint rather than an expected offer, and the within-occupation spread — visible in the tenth and ninetieth percentile figures — is wide enough that a state-level median is a weak predictor for any individual worker.
- Take-home calculations for firefighters assume a single filer with no dependants, the standard deduction, and no pre-tax retirement or HSA contributions. Each omitted item reduces taxable income, so the figures function as a lower bound on retained pay for this household shape; the highest such figure is $75,325, in Washington. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- Real-terms results for firefighters rest on statewide regional price parities, which average over intra-state variation that is itself larger than much of the interstate variation. They support comparison between states and not the pricing of an individual relocation; Louisiana anchors the distribution at $31,903. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.