Security and Fire Alarm Systems Installers
What the pay figures show
- Alaska comes first for this job on every measure. $79,870 on paper. Still first after tax. Still first at $63,922 once you adjust for what things cost. When the headline and the reality agree, say so plainly.
- For security and fire alarm systems installers, Alaska's $79,870 median is the highest nominally, after tax, and after regional price adjustment, at $63,922. Concordance across all three measures is uncommon and worth stating explicitly, because the absence of a reordering is itself the finding for this occupation.
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
$60,070
People doing it
86,340
Highest paid
$79,870
AK
Best off, really
$63,922
AK, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$38,800
Highest tenth
$81,150
Lowest, really
$42,236
DC
States with data
51
National average
$60,960
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
101.72%
AK, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Pay for this job is fairly steady around the country. Count tax and local prices and the states bunch closer still, from $42,236 to $63,922. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Just 86,340 Americans work in this job. Small fields move around more from year to year.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $60,070 in the middle.
- Geographic dispersion in security and fire alarm systems installers is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $42,236 through $63,922. Where nominal spread is this contained, relocation decisions in the occupation turn on non-wage factors, because the wage differential does not survive the adjustments in a form large enough to drive them.
- 86,340 are employed nationally in security and fire alarm systems installers — a small occupation, where the state spread above is more sensitive to sample composition than it would be in a large one.
- 51 jurisdictions report security and fire alarm systems installers, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Security and Fire Alarm Systems Installers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $38,800 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $60,070 |
| Top tenth earn over | $81,150 |
| This salary | $60,070 |
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 Security and Fire Alarm Systems Installers
The national median for this job
$60,070around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $38,800 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $60,070 |
| Top tenth | $81,150 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Security and Fire Alarm Systems Installers, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $47,160 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Alaska · $79,870 |
| Spread | $32,710 |
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 | $52,270 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $53,790 |
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 | $79,870 | $65,019 | $63,922 |
| RI | $76,320 | $60,079 | $59,243 |
| IA | $63,750 | $51,592 | $58,121 |
| CT | $75,410 | $58,483 | $56,403 |
| MA | $78,530 | $60,469 | $55,867 |
| OH | $61,860 | $50,900 | $55,439 |
| WA | $72,950 | $60,150 | $55,406 |
| WY | $59,800 | $50,229 | $55,289 |
| ND | $57,620 | $48,478 | $54,733 |
| KY | $60,700 | $48,946 | $54,103 |
| KS | $61,480 | $48,437 | $53,840 |
| AL | $60,710 | $48,345 | $53,735 |
| OR | $75,710 | $56,018 | $53,492 |
| SD | $55,690 | $46,927 | $53,269 |
| NV | $60,980 | $51,177 | $52,771 |
| WI | $61,130 | $49,124 | $52,766 |
| MT | $58,800 | $47,419 | $52,545 |
| NM | $58,350 | $47,487 | $52,539 |
| ME | $64,080 | $50,663 | $52,178 |
| SC | $59,710 | $48,514 | $52,066 |
| IN | $58,070 | $47,156 | $51,154 |
| UT | $61,150 | $48,593 | $51,149 |
| LA | $54,730 | $44,900 | $50,823 |
| MN | $62,440 | $49,628 | $50,426 |
| VT | $60,080 | $48,599 | $50,292 |
| CA | $71,570 | $56,526 | $50,209 |
| MD | $65,330 | $51,933 | $49,952 |
| CO | $62,250 | $50,167 | $49,483 |
| PA | $59,500 | $48,162 | $49,397 |
| NH | $61,530 | $51,619 | $49,000 |
| FL | $60,070 | $50,446 | $48,763 |
| AZ | $59,680 | $49,043 | $48,507 |
| MO | $54,620 | $44,437 | $48,427 |
| IL | $59,800 | $47,414 | $47,963 |
| VA | $60,790 | $48,290 | $47,931 |
| DE | $59,680 | $47,388 | $47,744 |
| MI | $55,830 | $44,917 | $47,691 |
| TN | $51,460 | $43,528 | $47,050 |
| NJ | $63,140 | $50,972 | $46,814 |
| NC | $54,120 | $44,015 | $46,755 |
| WV | $51,100 | $41,748 | $46,505 |
| AR | $48,950 | $40,159 | $46,422 |
| HI | $63,140 | $49,558 | $45,629 |
| TX | $52,270 | $44,179 | $45,463 |
| OK | $48,240 | $39,271 | $44,481 |
| GA | $53,100 | $42,795 | $44,256 |
| MS | $47,160 | $38,279 | $43,851 |
| ID | $49,180 | $39,943 | $43,689 |
| NE | $48,000 | $39,268 | $43,449 |
| NY | $58,550 | $46,660 | $43,354 |
| DC | $58,460 | $46,799 | $42,236 |
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 $60,070 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 Alaska, at $65,019.
- 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 the District of Columbia, on $42,236.
- All wage figures for security and fire alarm systems installers are medians rather than entry or offer rates; the national median is $60,070. 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 security and fire alarm systems installers 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 $65,019, which leads in Alaska.
- Real-terms results for security and fire alarm systems installers 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; the District of Columbia anchors the distribution at $42,236. Wage and price series are published on separate cycles and therefore carry different reference periods.