Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers
What the pay figures show
- California pays this job the most, $118,880. It still pays the most after tax. What it does not do is stay ahead once you count what living there costs. Level that out and Alaska wins, at $77,243. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For police and sheriff's patrol officers, California leads both nominally at $118,880 and after tax — state income tax differentials are not large enough here to disturb the ordering. Regional price parity is: deflating take-home by each state's price level puts Alaska first at $77,243. The adjustment that matters for this occupation is therefore cost of living rather than tax, which is the opposite of the assumption most relocation comparisons start from.
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
$76,210
People doing it
670,520
Highest paid
$118,880
CA
Best off, really
$77,243
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$47,510
Highest tenth
$115,120
Lowest, really
$42,959
MS
States with data
51
National average
$79,200
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, 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 $42,959 up to $77,243.
- 670,520 people do this job across the country, and the middle one earns $76,210. Common work, though not one of the giants.
- Coverage is complete — all 51 jurisdictions publish this, on a middle wage of $76,210. Nothing is missing.
- The nominal spread for police and sheriff's patrol officers approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $42,959 to $77,243, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- National employment in police and sheriff's patrol officers is 670,520 — 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.
- Coverage for police and sheriff's patrol officers is complete at 51 jurisdictions. No suppression applies, so the highest and lowest figures above are genuinely the national extremes.
Pay band: Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $47,510 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $76,210 |
| Top tenth earn over | $115,120 |
| This salary | $76,210 |
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 Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers
The national median for this job
$76,210around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $47,510 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $76,210 |
| Top tenth | $115,120 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Police and Sheriff's Patrol Officers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $46,140 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $118,880 |
| Spread | $72,740 |
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 | $75,900 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $78,107 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AK | $99,130 | $78,568 | $77,243 |
| CA | $118,880 | $85,498 | $75,944 |
| IL | $100,520 | $74,715 | $75,580 |
| WA | $102,080 | $80,643 | $74,283 |
| CO | $97,350 | $73,741 | $72,736 |
| DE | $92,970 | $69,329 | $69,851 |
| ND | $74,500 | $61,047 | $68,924 |
| PA | $85,470 | $66,334 | $68,035 |
| OH | $77,020 | $61,612 | $67,107 |
| IA | $74,470 | $59,002 | $66,468 |
| NV | $78,140 | $63,801 | $65,788 |
| WI | $78,090 | $60,585 | $65,077 |
| NE | $74,620 | $58,634 | $64,877 |
| NY | $92,790 | $69,673 | $64,737 |
| NJ | $92,610 | $70,272 | $64,539 |
| MN | $83,360 | $63,329 | $64,347 |
| TX | $75,900 | $62,226 | $64,035 |
| IN | $73,370 | $58,311 | $63,255 |
| UT | $77,310 | $59,777 | $62,922 |
| AZ | $78,880 | $62,753 | $62,067 |
| MT | $70,050 | $55,513 | $61,515 |
| MI | $73,730 | $57,816 | $61,387 |
| NM | $69,180 | $55,412 | $61,306 |
| WY | $66,140 | $55,323 | $60,897 |
| OR | $88,140 | $63,674 | $60,804 |
| CT | $82,170 | $62,867 | $60,631 |
| DC | $88,650 | $66,629 | $60,132 |
| RI | $77,230 | $60,685 | $59,840 |
| FL | $74,470 | $61,220 | $59,177 |
| ID | $66,990 | $53,260 | $58,256 |
| MD | $77,970 | $60,342 | $58,041 |
| HI | $83,820 | $62,870 | $57,887 |
| SD | $60,740 | $50,985 | $57,875 |
| VT | $68,910 | $54,871 | $56,781 |
| NH | $71,640 | $59,229 | $56,224 |
| MA | $78,940 | $60,737 | $56,115 |
| ME | $67,050 | $52,794 | $54,372 |
| OK | $59,700 | $47,963 | $54,327 |
| KY | $60,490 | $48,784 | $53,924 |
| TN | $59,280 | $49,811 | $53,842 |
| MO | $59,460 | $48,099 | $52,417 |
| KS | $59,230 | $46,755 | $51,970 |
| VA | $65,870 | $52,080 | $51,692 |
| WV | $56,960 | $46,210 | $51,474 |
| NC | $59,300 | $47,970 | $50,957 |
| SC | $58,070 | $47,305 | $50,769 |
| GA | $58,120 | $46,578 | $48,168 |
| AL | $51,270 | $41,176 | $45,766 |
| AR | $47,670 | $39,178 | $45,288 |
| LA | $48,380 | $39,988 | $45,264 |
| MS | $46,140 | $37,500 | $42,959 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $76,210, 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.
- 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 $85,498.
- 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 $42,959. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for police and sheriff's patrol officers, with a national value of $76,210. 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.
- The household modeled for police and sheriff's patrol officers 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, $85,498. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- Real-terms figures for police and sheriff's patrol officers 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.