Public Safety Telecommunicators
What the pay figures show
- California pays this job the most, at $80,120. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $59,230 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- California leads for public safety telecommunicators at $80,120 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $59,230 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
$53,040
People doing it
102,500
Highest paid
$80,120
CA
Best off, really
$59,230
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$37,320
Highest tenth
$79,830
Lowest, really
$32,787
MS
States with data
51
National average
$56,740
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, 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 $32,787 to $59,230.
- Roughly 102,500 people hold this job nationally, earning $53,040 in the middle. A solid, ordinary-sized job.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $53,040 in the middle.
- Interstate variation in public safety telecommunicators 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 $32,787 to $59,230, so the majority of the gap represents a real difference in what the work buys.
- 102,500 are employed nationally in public safety telecommunicators, placing it well inside the reported range without approaching the highest-headcount occupations.
- 51 jurisdictions report public safety telecommunicators, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Public Safety Telecommunicators
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $37,320 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $53,040 |
| Top tenth earn over | $79,830 |
| This salary | $53,040 |
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 Public Safety Telecommunicators
The national median for this job
$53,040around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $37,320 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $53,040 |
| Top tenth | $79,830 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Public Safety Telecommunicators, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $34,510 |
|---|---|
| Highest | California · $80,120 |
| Spread | $45,610 |
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 | $50,040 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $51,495 |
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 | $78,850 | $64,301 | $59,230 |
| ND | $59,940 | $50,342 | $56,837 |
| CA | $80,120 | $61,835 | $54,925 |
| AK | $66,660 | $55,725 | $54,786 |
| MN | $66,550 | $52,646 | $53,493 |
| OH | $58,100 | $47,982 | $52,261 |
| IA | $56,770 | $46,249 | $52,102 |
| NV | $60,040 | $50,422 | $51,992 |
| WI | $60,000 | $48,283 | $51,863 |
| OR | $71,980 | $53,720 | $51,298 |
| CO | $63,520 | $51,132 | $50,435 |
| VT | $59,470 | $48,150 | $49,826 |
| IL | $61,260 | $48,515 | $49,077 |
| CT | $62,410 | $49,644 | $47,878 |
| WY | $50,600 | $42,837 | $47,152 |
| ME | $57,250 | $45,636 | $47,000 |
| RI | $58,310 | $47,265 | $46,607 |
| NH | $58,240 | $48,976 | $46,491 |
| SD | $47,900 | $40,668 | $46,163 |
| AZ | $56,600 | $46,646 | $46,136 |
| ID | $51,780 | $41,894 | $45,824 |
| MI | $53,310 | $43,000 | $45,655 |
| UT | $54,120 | $43,257 | $45,533 |
| NY | $61,450 | $48,834 | $45,374 |
| NE | $50,270 | $40,988 | $45,353 |
| MD | $58,910 | $47,080 | $45,284 |
| MA | $61,720 | $49,006 | $45,276 |
| NM | $49,060 | $40,457 | $44,761 |
| NJ | $59,240 | $48,054 | $44,134 |
| TX | $50,040 | $42,387 | $43,619 |
| IN | $49,050 | $40,174 | $43,580 |
| MT | $47,640 | $38,976 | $43,190 |
| DE | $53,140 | $42,496 | $42,815 |
| DC | $59,080 | $47,257 | $42,649 |
| TN | $46,390 | $39,454 | $42,646 |
| MO | $46,990 | $38,665 | $42,136 |
| PA | $49,890 | $40,735 | $41,779 |
| HI | $57,020 | $45,105 | $41,530 |
| KY | $45,670 | $37,395 | $41,335 |
| FL | $50,170 | $42,492 | $41,074 |
| NC | $46,550 | $38,234 | $40,615 |
| VA | $50,490 | $40,606 | $40,304 |
| KS | $45,110 | $36,197 | $40,235 |
| SC | $43,540 | $36,577 | $39,256 |
| WV | $40,490 | $33,655 | $37,489 |
| OK | $39,890 | $32,937 | $37,307 |
| AR | $38,240 | $31,950 | $36,932 |
| LA | $38,550 | $32,385 | $36,657 |
| GA | $42,790 | $35,025 | $36,221 |
| AL | $38,960 | $31,826 | $35,374 |
| MS | $34,510 | $28,620 | $32,787 |
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 $53,040 nationally, half over. Your own experience and employer will move you well away from that midpoint in either direction.
- 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 Washington, the best state after tax, the figure works out at $64,301.
- One price figure per state stands behind the real-terms numbers for this job. 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 Mississippi, on $32,787.
- All wage figures for public safety telecommunicators are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $53,040. 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.
- Take-home calculations for public safety telecommunicators 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 $64,301, 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 public safety telecommunicators 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; Mississippi anchors the distribution at $32,787. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.