Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. The District of Columbia pays this job best, at $60,400. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $43,529 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers is also the real leader: the District of Columbia at $60,400, holding through tax and through price deflation to $43,529. 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.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$33,580
People doing it
157,550
Highest paid
$60,400
DC
Best off, really
$43,529
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$25,780
Highest tenth
$43,970
Lowest, really
$22,235
LA
States with data
51
National average
$34,470
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, 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 $22,235 to $43,529.
- 157,550 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $33,580. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Every state reports this one. All 51 jurisdictions publish a figure, and the middle wage is $33,580, so the comparison above leaves nobody out.
- Interstate variation in lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers 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 $22,235 to $43,529, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- National employment in lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers is 157,550 — a substantial occupation, though an order of magnitude below the largest. Regional differentials here move real aggregate sums without dominating any single state's wage bill.
- All 51 jurisdictions publish an occupational median for lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers, so the spread described above is a complete national range rather than a range across a reported subset.
Pay band: Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $25,780 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $33,580 |
| Top tenth earn over | $43,970 |
| This salary | $33,580 |
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 Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers
The national median for this job
$33,580around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $25,780 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $33,580 |
| Top tenth | $43,970 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Louisiana · $22,240 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $60,400 |
| Spread | $38,160 |
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 | $29,450 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $30,306 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $60,400 | $48,232 | $43,529 |
| HI | $52,630 | $41,912 | $38,589 |
| MT | $37,750 | $31,495 | $34,899 |
| CA | $42,720 | $35,661 | $31,676 |
| VT | $36,030 | $30,179 | $31,230 |
| SD | $30,990 | $27,080 | $30,740 |
| WA | $37,770 | $32,528 | $29,963 |
| AZ | $35,380 | $30,126 | $29,797 |
| RI | $35,770 | $30,000 | $29,582 |
| CO | $35,640 | $29,957 | $29,549 |
| ME | $34,320 | $28,676 | $29,534 |
| AK | $34,540 | $29,933 | $29,428 |
| FL | $35,040 | $30,335 | $29,322 |
| CT | $35,960 | $30,111 | $29,039 |
| ND | $28,430 | $25,022 | $28,251 |
| WY | $29,030 | $25,506 | $28,075 |
| IL | $33,710 | $27,742 | $28,063 |
| NY | $36,590 | $30,201 | $28,061 |
| MA | $36,650 | $30,116 | $27,824 |
| NV | $30,830 | $26,952 | $27,791 |
| MD | $34,520 | $28,641 | $27,548 |
| NE | $29,100 | $24,894 | $27,545 |
| MO | $29,260 | $25,253 | $27,520 |
| NM | $28,590 | $24,846 | $27,489 |
| MN | $31,870 | $26,901 | $27,334 |
| NJ | $34,760 | $29,589 | $27,175 |
| GA | $30,880 | $26,050 | $26,939 |
| ID | $28,770 | $24,625 | $26,935 |
| AR | $27,000 | $23,298 | $26,932 |
| TN | $28,200 | $24,833 | $26,842 |
| DE | $31,930 | $26,631 | $26,831 |
| KY | $28,520 | $24,215 | $26,767 |
| MI | $29,760 | $25,078 | $26,627 |
| OH | $27,770 | $24,431 | $26,610 |
| TX | $29,450 | $25,843 | $26,594 |
| OR | $35,030 | $27,812 | $26,558 |
| NH | $32,100 | $27,972 | $26,553 |
| IN | $28,640 | $24,377 | $26,444 |
| WI | $28,570 | $24,581 | $26,403 |
| AL | $28,130 | $23,612 | $26,245 |
| PA | $29,480 | $24,962 | $25,602 |
| KS | $27,220 | $22,795 | $25,338 |
| UT | $28,720 | $23,978 | $25,240 |
| VA | $30,070 | $25,373 | $25,184 |
| IA | $25,460 | $22,221 | $25,033 |
| NC | $27,310 | $23,519 | $24,983 |
| OK | $25,250 | $21,768 | $24,656 |
| SC | $26,210 | $22,971 | $24,653 |
| MS | $24,440 | $20,851 | $23,886 |
| WV | $24,670 | $21,359 | $23,792 |
| LA | $22,240 | $19,644 | $22,235 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job 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 $33,580.
- Take-home figures for this job 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 the District of Columbia, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $48,232.
- Levelling out prices for this job is done with one number per state, which is a simplification. Living costs inside a state vary a lot between its cities and its countryside. The comparison shows which way the ranking moves, not an exact figure for any address — Louisiana sits at the bottom on $22,235.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $33,580, 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.
- Take-home calculations for lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers 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 $48,232, in the District of Columbia. Municipal and school-district income taxes are excluded, which understates the burden materially in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland and parts of a few other states.
- The price deflation applied to lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers uses state-level parities. Within-state dispersion in price level, concentrated in housing, is large enough that a state figure describes no particular locality well; the bottom of this occupation's real range is Louisiana at $22,235. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Louisiana anchors the bottom at $22,235 — and the two source series are dated independently.