Security Guards
What the pay figures show
- The District of Columbia pays security guards the most, at $64,210. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $46,068 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- The District of Columbia leads for security guards at $64,210 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $46,068 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
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Pay by state · May 2025 wages · tax year 2026
National median
$38,020
People doing it
1,283,470
Highest paid
$64,210
DC
Best off, really
$46,068
DC, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$30,210
Highest tenth
$58,840
Lowest, really
$27,438
WV
States with data
51
National average
$42,470
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
110.8%
DC, 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 $27,438 up to $46,068.
- Roughly 1,283,470 Americans do this job. Hold that scale in mind. A few thousand dollars here is a few thousand dollars across millions of households.
- No gaps here — all 51 jurisdictions publish a number for this job, which sits at $38,020 in the middle.
- The nominal spread for security guards approaches a factor of two across states. Deflating for tax and price level compresses it substantially but leaves a real range of $27,438 to $46,068, indicating that most of the dispersion is real purchasing power rather than compensation for local costs.
- With 1,283,470 workers nationally, security guards is one of the highest-headcount occupations BLS publishes. Aggregate effects of the differentials described above are correspondingly large, even where the per-worker figures appear modest.
- 51 jurisdictions report security guards, giving full coverage. The extremes quoted above are therefore the true reported maximum and minimum.
Pay band: Security Guards
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $30,210 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $38,020 |
| Top tenth earn over | $58,840 |
| This salary | $38,020 |
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 Guards
The national median for this job
$38,020around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $30,210 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $38,020 |
| Top tenth | $58,840 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Security Guards, state by state
The national median for this job
51states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | West Virginia · $28,800 |
|---|---|
| Highest | District of Columbia · $64,210 |
| Spread | $35,410 |
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 | $35,980 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $37,026 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| DC | $64,210 | $51,046 | $46,068 |
| NM | $43,320 | $36,092 | $39,931 |
| AK | $47,480 | $40,330 | $39,650 |
| VT | $45,550 | $37,510 | $38,816 |
| ND | $39,310 | $33,766 | $38,122 |
| WY | $39,200 | $33,677 | $37,070 |
| WA | $47,100 | $40,025 | $36,868 |
| MO | $40,390 | $33,672 | $36,695 |
| CO | $45,150 | $37,180 | $36,673 |
| NE | $39,840 | $33,082 | $36,605 |
| NH | $45,200 | $38,498 | $36,545 |
| UT | $42,700 | $34,589 | $36,409 |
| SD | $37,150 | $32,030 | $36,358 |
| MN | $43,380 | $35,534 | $36,105 |
| MT | $38,480 | $32,047 | $35,511 |
| VA | $43,640 | $35,496 | $35,232 |
| IA | $37,080 | $31,177 | $35,122 |
| ID | $38,300 | $31,777 | $34,758 |
| AR | $35,770 | $30,056 | $34,744 |
| OK | $36,270 | $30,191 | $34,197 |
| OR | $45,500 | $35,308 | $33,716 |
| TN | $36,000 | $31,106 | $33,623 |
| WI | $37,440 | $31,271 | $33,589 |
| KS | $37,080 | $30,193 | $33,561 |
| MA | $44,670 | $36,159 | $33,407 |
| NY | $44,240 | $35,935 | $33,389 |
| OH | $35,770 | $30,654 | $33,388 |
| ME | $39,100 | $32,240 | $33,204 |
| NV | $37,310 | $32,159 | $33,160 |
| IN | $36,490 | $30,453 | $33,035 |
| KY | $35,420 | $29,518 | $32,628 |
| MI | $37,080 | $30,649 | $32,541 |
| SC | $35,460 | $30,265 | $32,481 |
| IL | $39,490 | $32,100 | $32,472 |
| AZ | $38,290 | $32,391 | $32,037 |
| CA | $43,240 | $36,058 | $32,029 |
| TX | $35,980 | $31,090 | $31,994 |
| HI | $42,820 | $34,736 | $31,983 |
| CT | $39,920 | $32,934 | $31,763 |
| PA | $37,050 | $30,812 | $31,602 |
| NC | $35,010 | $29,422 | $31,254 |
| LA | $32,240 | $27,504 | $31,132 |
| AL | $33,720 | $27,851 | $30,956 |
| RI | $36,940 | $30,896 | $30,466 |
| MD | $38,220 | $31,438 | $30,239 |
| DE | $36,360 | $29,944 | $30,170 |
| GA | $34,980 | $29,140 | $30,134 |
| NJ | $38,880 | $32,777 | $30,103 |
| FL | $35,900 | $31,026 | $29,990 |
| MS | $29,180 | $24,551 | $28,125 |
| WV | $28,800 | $24,631 | $27,438 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of security guards earn less than the figures here and half earn more, and experience, employer and city move an individual a long way from the middle. Nationally the middle earns $38,020.
- The take-home numbers here use the simplest possible household: one filer for security guards, 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 the District of Columbia, at $51,046.
- Levelling out prices for security guards 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 — West Virginia sits at the bottom on $27,438.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for security guards, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $38,020, with half of workers below it; dispersion within a state routinely exceeds the dispersion between states, driven by tenure, employer size, sector and metropolitan area. An individual's position in the distribution is not predictable from geography alone.
- Retained-pay figures for security guards 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 $51,046, which leads in the District of Columbia.
- The price deflation applied to security guards 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 West Virginia at $27,438. The comparison establishes the direction and rough magnitude of the reordering rather than an address-level result — West Virginia anchors the bottom at $27,438 — and the two source series are dated independently.