First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers
What the pay figures show
- New Jersey pays this job the most, at $133,210. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $91,815 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- New Jersey leads for first-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers at $133,210 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $91,815 in price-deflated terms. That robustness is the minority case: across the largest occupations, state income tax reorders the leader roughly a third of the time and price level does so more often still. Where the nominal leader survives both, the wage premium is large enough to absorb the state's own tax and price levels.
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
$93,530
People doing it
99,140
Highest paid
$133,210
NJ
Best off, really
$91,815
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$53,430
Highest tenth
$140,010
Lowest, really
$44,805
MS
States with data
50
National average
$96,930
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, 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 $44,805 to $91,815.
- Just 99,140 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $93,530 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. New Jersey tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in first-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers 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 $44,805 to $91,815 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- 99,140 are employed nationally in first-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for first-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $53,430 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $93,530 |
| Top tenth earn over | $140,010 |
| This salary | $93,530 |
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 First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers
The national median for this job
$93,530around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $53,430 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $93,530 |
| Top tenth | $140,010 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
First-Line Supervisors of Firefighting and Prevention Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $48,250 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Jersey · $133,210 |
| Spread | $84,960 |
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 | $81,710 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $84,085 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| WA | $129,350 | $99,677 | $91,815 |
| IL | $123,500 | $89,710 | $90,749 |
| NJ | $133,210 | $96,020 | $88,186 |
| NY | $132,520 | $94,782 | $88,066 |
| MD | $120,530 | $88,146 | $84,785 |
| DC | $126,560 | $89,981 | $81,207 |
| CA | $127,630 | $90,724 | $80,585 |
| UT | $100,380 | $74,980 | $78,925 |
| PA | $101,050 | $76,816 | $78,786 |
| NV | $93,920 | $74,903 | $77,235 |
| ID | $92,630 | $69,939 | $76,499 |
| CO | $102,580 | $77,190 | $76,138 |
| FL | $98,560 | $78,167 | $75,559 |
| ND | $82,880 | $66,779 | $75,395 |
| OK | $85,310 | $65,507 | $74,199 |
| IN | $88,310 | $68,380 | $74,178 |
| AZ | $96,470 | $74,687 | $73,871 |
| AK | $92,760 | $74,087 | $72,837 |
| OH | $84,490 | $66,662 | $72,607 |
| VA | $97,780 | $72,757 | $72,216 |
| WY | $80,260 | $65,293 | $71,870 |
| NH | $93,720 | $74,762 | $70,969 |
| CT | $98,500 | $73,457 | $70,844 |
| MT | $82,820 | $63,775 | $70,670 |
| NE | $80,810 | $62,707 | $69,384 |
| TN | $77,920 | $63,647 | $68,796 |
| WI | $83,310 | $63,948 | $68,689 |
| TX | $81,710 | $66,313 | $68,241 |
| OR | $100,260 | $71,140 | $67,933 |
| SD | $72,420 | $59,777 | $67,856 |
| IA | $76,010 | $60,026 | $67,622 |
| KS | $78,880 | $60,209 | $66,925 |
| MA | $96,600 | $72,278 | $66,777 |
| VT | $83,250 | $64,012 | $66,241 |
| RI | $85,170 | $65,973 | $65,055 |
| MO | $75,970 | $59,642 | $64,996 |
| MI | $77,550 | $60,341 | $64,067 |
| AL | $73,320 | $57,275 | $63,660 |
| MN | $78,800 | $60,431 | $61,403 |
| ME | $74,790 | $57,716 | $59,442 |
| DE | $74,670 | $57,663 | $58,097 |
| AR | $61,890 | $50,077 | $57,887 |
| SC | $65,160 | $52,531 | $56,378 |
| LA | $59,750 | $48,783 | $55,219 |
| GA | $67,200 | $53,351 | $55,172 |
| KY | $60,850 | $49,061 | $54,230 |
| NM | $58,430 | $47,548 | $52,605 |
| NC | $59,560 | $48,169 | $51,168 |
| WV | $55,380 | $45,007 | $50,134 |
| MS | $48,250 | $39,111 | $44,805 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $93,530, 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.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for this job, no children, no pension contributions, standard deduction. Real life usually reduces the tax bill below this. City and school-district income taxes are left out, and in Ohio or Pennsylvania that is a real omission. The best after-tax state here is Washington, at $99,677.
- 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 $44,805. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for first-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers, with a national value of $93,530. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for first-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers model a single filer taking the standard deduction with no dependants and no pre-tax deferrals — deliberately the simplest household, so the comparison across states isolates geography rather than personal circumstances. Local income taxes are outside the model; Ohio, Pennsylvania and Maryland residents should expect a meaningfully lower figure than $99,677, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for first-line supervisors of firefighting and prevention workers 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.