School Bus Monitors
What the pay figures show
- The pay leader for school bus monitors is Washington, at $42,330. Tax does not shift it. Prices are the twist. Adjust for what a basket costs and North Dakota comes out ahead, worth $37,369. Worth knowing before anyone packs.
- Nominal and post-tax rankings agree for school bus monitors: Washington leads at $42,330 on both. Applying regional price parities separates them, promoting North Dakota to $37,369 in real terms. Price level, not tax, is the operative variable for this occupation — and it is the one absent from essentially every published wage comparison.
Compare this career across states
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$35,100
People doing it
78,420
Highest paid
$42,330
WA
Best off, really
$37,369
ND, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$28,130
Highest tenth
$43,250
Lowest, really
$23,042
MS
States with data
50
National average
$35,150
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
88.57%
ND, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Nationally, this job pays within a fairly narrow band. Adjust for tax and for local prices and the band tightens again, to between $23,042 and $37,369. Geography is not the main lever on pay here.
- Just 78,420 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- Some states are missing here. There are figures for 50 jurisdictions, averaging $35,100 in the middle. A blank means nobody published a number, not that the job pays nothing there. Washington leads the published set.
- Wages for school bus monitors cluster comparatively tightly across states, and the clustering strengthens after tax and price deflation — a real range of $23,042 to $37,369. Occupation-level factors such as specialisation and employer type therefore explain more of an individual's pay here than location does.
- 78,420 are employed nationally in school bus monitors — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- Coverage for school bus monitors runs to 50 jurisdictions, short of the full set. The omitted states are suppressed at source; treat the spread above as the range across reported states rather than across the country.
Pay band: School Bus Monitors
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $28,130 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $35,100 |
| Top tenth earn over | $43,250 |
| This salary | $35,100 |
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 School Bus Monitors
The national median for this job
$35,100around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $28,130 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $35,100 |
| Top tenth | $43,250 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
School Bus Monitors, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $23,500 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $42,330 |
| Spread | $18,830 |
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 | $29,300 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $30,152 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| ND | $38,480 | $33,099 | $37,369 |
| WY | $36,810 | $31,757 | $34,956 |
| NM | $36,250 | $30,715 | $33,982 |
| SD | $34,380 | $29,804 | $33,832 |
| VT | $39,020 | $32,482 | $33,613 |
| WA | $42,330 | $36,192 | $33,338 |
| WI | $36,640 | $30,667 | $32,941 |
| UT | $38,020 | $31,037 | $32,670 |
| MN | $38,590 | $31,941 | $32,455 |
| ME | $38,060 | $31,464 | $32,405 |
| MT | $34,740 | $29,218 | $32,376 |
| NE | $34,750 | $29,224 | $32,336 |
| MO | $34,220 | $29,005 | $31,609 |
| IA | $32,740 | $27,854 | $31,379 |
| DC | $41,720 | $34,365 | $31,014 |
| NH | $37,620 | $32,408 | $30,763 |
| MD | $38,750 | $31,839 | $30,624 |
| IN | $33,590 | $28,208 | $30,600 |
| OR | $40,900 | $32,015 | $30,571 |
| DE | $36,560 | $30,094 | $30,320 |
| HI | $40,250 | $32,856 | $30,252 |
| PA | $35,290 | $29,452 | $30,207 |
| VA | $36,510 | $30,177 | $29,953 |
| ID | $32,230 | $27,222 | $29,775 |
| RI | $35,910 | $30,107 | $29,688 |
| NC | $32,970 | $27,865 | $29,599 |
| AZ | $34,560 | $29,487 | $29,165 |
| AK | $33,990 | $29,491 | $28,994 |
| MI | $32,480 | $27,148 | $28,824 |
| CA | $38,360 | $32,332 | $28,719 |
| FL | $34,110 | $29,587 | $28,600 |
| CT | $35,350 | $29,648 | $28,593 |
| NY | $36,910 | $30,441 | $28,284 |
| IL | $33,840 | $27,840 | $28,163 |
| NJ | $36,100 | $30,640 | $28,141 |
| AR | $28,260 | $24,293 | $28,082 |
| CO | $33,540 | $28,362 | $27,975 |
| MA | $36,020 | $29,641 | $27,385 |
| KS | $29,420 | $24,466 | $27,195 |
| OK | $28,130 | $24,010 | $27,195 |
| OH | $28,110 | $24,702 | $26,905 |
| KY | $28,220 | $23,979 | $26,506 |
| TX | $29,300 | $25,723 | $26,470 |
| NV | $29,230 | $25,666 | $26,466 |
| GA | $30,130 | $25,485 | $26,355 |
| AL | $28,210 | $23,675 | $26,314 |
| TN | $27,250 | $24,050 | $25,996 |
| LA | $25,250 | $22,032 | $24,939 |
| SC | $26,240 | $22,995 | $24,679 |
| MS | $23,500 | $20,114 | $23,042 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for school bus monitors as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $35,100, 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 school bus monitors. 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, Washington keeps the most at $36,192.
- Levelling out prices for school bus monitors 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 — Mississippi sits at the bottom on $23,042.
- These are distribution medians for school bus monitors, with a national value of $35,100. 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 school bus monitors 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 Washington retains the most, $36,192. Municipal and school-district income taxes are not included in any state.
- The price deflation applied to school bus monitors 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 Mississippi at $23,042. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — Mississippi anchors the bottom at $23,042 — and the two source series are dated independently.