Protective Service Workers, All Other
What the pay figures show
- New Hampshire pays this job the most, $88,960. 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 Alabama wins, at $73,283. Same work. A wage that goes further.
- For protective service workers, all other, New Hampshire leads both nominally at $88,960 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 Alabama first at $73,283. 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
$42,540
People doing it
81,500
Highest paid
$88,960
NH
Best off, really
$73,283
AL, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$32,470
Highest tenth
$74,590
Lowest, really
$29,005
VA
States with data
51
National average
$48,070
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
89.97%
AL, 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 $29,005 to $73,283.
- This is a small job: about 81,500 people nationally. Fewer workers means each state figure is built on less data.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $42,540 in the middle.
- Interstate variation in protective service workers, all other 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 $29,005 to $73,283, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- With 81,500 workers, protective service workers, all other is among the smaller occupations BLS publishes. Treat single-state figures as indicative rather than precise; suppression and sampling error both bite harder at this scale.
- 51 jurisdictions report protective service workers, all other, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Protective Service Workers, All Other
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $32,470 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $42,540 |
| Top tenth earn over | $74,590 |
| This salary | $42,540 |
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 Protective Service Workers, All Other
The national median for this job
$42,540around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $32,470 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $42,540 |
| Top tenth | $74,590 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Protective Service Workers, All Other, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Arkansas · $31,270 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Hampshire · $88,960 |
| Spread | $57,690 |
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 | $33,500 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $34,474 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| AL | $86,350 | $65,933 | $73,283 |
| NH | $88,960 | $71,413 | $67,790 |
| DC | $88,570 | $66,579 | $60,087 |
| NM | $64,940 | $52,473 | $58,054 |
| ND | $53,460 | $45,135 | $50,959 |
| WI | $57,620 | $46,491 | $49,938 |
| VT | $57,490 | $46,689 | $48,315 |
| OK | $52,360 | $42,396 | $48,021 |
| NV | $54,790 | $46,204 | $47,643 |
| AK | $56,120 | $47,272 | $46,475 |
| MS | $49,800 | $40,294 | $46,160 |
| MO | $49,290 | $40,405 | $44,033 |
| RI | $54,630 | $44,447 | $43,828 |
| MI | $49,730 | $40,275 | $42,762 |
| NE | $47,090 | $38,578 | $42,686 |
| IN | $47,930 | $39,307 | $42,640 |
| KY | $46,580 | $38,094 | $42,108 |
| UT | $49,610 | $39,834 | $41,930 |
| LA | $44,410 | $36,917 | $41,788 |
| HI | $57,370 | $45,360 | $41,764 |
| ID | $46,580 | $37,992 | $41,555 |
| ME | $49,940 | $40,256 | $41,459 |
| NJ | $54,950 | $44,844 | $41,186 |
| OH | $44,890 | $37,731 | $41,096 |
| SD | $42,260 | $36,136 | $41,019 |
| MD | $52,780 | $42,445 | $40,827 |
| TN | $44,100 | $37,614 | $40,658 |
| AZ | $49,090 | $40,799 | $40,353 |
| WV | $43,700 | $36,115 | $40,229 |
| SC | $44,130 | $37,028 | $39,740 |
| NY | $52,690 | $42,268 | $39,273 |
| NC | $43,740 | $36,089 | $38,335 |
| MT | $41,660 | $34,452 | $38,177 |
| GA | $45,200 | $36,842 | $38,099 |
| WY | $40,330 | $34,585 | $38,069 |
| KS | $42,150 | $33,984 | $37,775 |
| MA | $50,040 | $40,205 | $37,145 |
| FL | $44,310 | $37,783 | $36,522 |
| OR | $49,520 | $38,187 | $36,465 |
| CO | $44,340 | $36,565 | $36,066 |
| IA | $38,160 | $32,003 | $36,053 |
| WA | $42,170 | $36,064 | $33,219 |
| DE | $39,520 | $32,308 | $32,551 |
| MN | $38,330 | $31,746 | $32,257 |
| IL | $38,020 | $30,992 | $31,351 |
| AR | $31,270 | $26,607 | $30,757 |
| CT | $37,480 | $31,174 | $30,065 |
| TX | $33,500 | $29,097 | $29,943 |
| PA | $34,320 | $28,703 | $29,438 |
| CA | $39,330 | $33,073 | $29,377 |
| VA | $35,230 | $29,222 | $29,005 |
Sources and assumptions
- These are middle-of-the-range figures for this job, not what a new starter is offered. Half the people doing this job earn under $42,540 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- 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 New Hampshire, at $71,413.
- 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 — Virginia anchors the bottom at $29,005. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- All wage figures for protective service workers, all other are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $42,540. Within-state dispersion typically exceeds between-state dispersion in this data, so an individual's expected wage is determined more by experience, sector and employer than by the state comparisons presented here.
- Retained-pay figures for protective service workers, all other 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 $71,413, which leads in New Hampshire.
- Real-terms figures for protective service workers, all other 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.