Transportation Security Screeners
What the pay figures show
- For once the obvious answer is right. New Hampshire pays this job best, at $76,130. It keeps that lead after tax. It keeps it after local prices too — $59,222 in comparable money. Most jobs are not this tidy.
- The nominal leader for transportation security screeners is also the real leader: New Hampshire at $76,130, holding through tax and through price deflation to $59,222. Both adjustments leave the ordering at the top intact, which indicates a wage premium large enough to dominate the state's tax burden and price level rather than merely offset them.
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
$66,770
People doing it
50,290
Highest paid
$76,130
NH
Best off, really
$59,222
NH, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$44,700
Highest tenth
$78,350
Lowest, really
$45,615
MO
States with data
45
National average
$64,310
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
105.34%
NH, 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 $45,615 to $59,222. For work like this, where you live changes your life more than it changes your pay.
- Only 50,290 people do this job in the whole country. It is a small field, so the pay figures rest on fewer reports.
- Not every state reports this one. The figures here cover 45 jurisdictions, and the middle wage across them is $66,770. A state you do not see is one with no published number, not one paying nothing. Of those published, New Hampshire pays most.
- Geographic dispersion in transportation security screeners is moderate by national standards. Tax and price adjustment compress the distribution further, to a real range of $45,615 through $59,222. 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.
- National employment in transportation security screeners is 50,290. ⚠️ At this headcount the state-level medians rest on comparatively thin samples, and year-to-year movement in any one state reflects sampling as much as wages.
- BLS publishes an occupational median for transportation security screeners in 45 jurisdictions, short of the full set. ⚠️ Absence reflects estimate suppression — small samples or disclosure rules — rather than absence of employment, so the state comparison above is over the published subset.
Pay band: Transportation Security Screeners
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $44,700 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $66,770 |
| Top tenth earn over | $78,350 |
| This salary | $66,770 |
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 Transportation Security Screeners
The national median for this job
$66,770around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $44,700 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $66,770 |
| Top tenth | $78,350 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Transportation Security Screeners, state by state
The national median for this job
45states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Missouri · $51,210 |
|---|---|
| Highest | New Hampshire · $76,130 |
| Spread | $24,920 |
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 | $68,640 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $70,635 |
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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| NH | $76,130 | $62,387 | $59,222 |
| OH | $65,870 | $54,011 | $58,828 |
| TX | $68,640 | $57,118 | $58,779 |
| LA | $63,130 | $51,397 | $58,178 |
| AK | $71,390 | $59,053 | $58,057 |
| MS | $63,130 | $50,472 | $57,819 |
| AR | $61,110 | $49,479 | $57,196 |
| NM | $63,810 | $51,618 | $57,108 |
| MI | $67,390 | $53,626 | $56,937 |
| WV | $63,130 | $50,903 | $56,702 |
| WY | $61,110 | $51,282 | $56,448 |
| AL | $63,770 | $50,669 | $56,318 |
| IA | $61,590 | $49,939 | $56,258 |
| KY | $63,130 | $50,813 | $56,167 |
| RI | $71,510 | $56,876 | $56,084 |
| CO | $71,530 | $56,712 | $55,939 |
| IL | $70,570 | $55,128 | $55,766 |
| NV | $64,500 | $54,006 | $55,688 |
| PA | $67,330 | $54,130 | $55,518 |
| TN | $61,110 | $51,282 | $55,431 |
| KS | $63,130 | $49,671 | $55,211 |
| NC | $64,540 | $51,971 | $55,207 |
| ID | $63,130 | $50,412 | $55,141 |
| NE | $61,710 | $49,660 | $54,948 |
| GA | $66,770 | $53,070 | $54,881 |
| SC | $63,130 | $51,035 | $54,772 |
| MD | $72,240 | $56,583 | $54,425 |
| VT | $65,460 | $52,567 | $54,398 |
| WI | $63,130 | $50,612 | $54,365 |
| VA | $69,910 | $54,752 | $54,345 |
| IN | $61,670 | $49,942 | $54,177 |
| MN | $67,290 | $53,116 | $53,971 |
| NJ | $74,400 | $58,608 | $53,826 |
| SD | $55,530 | $46,798 | $53,123 |
| MA | $73,510 | $57,189 | $52,836 |
| ND | $54,950 | $46,332 | $52,310 |
| NY | $72,010 | $56,197 | $52,216 |
| AZ | $64,330 | $52,663 | $52,088 |
| ME | $63,130 | $49,964 | $51,458 |
| CA | $73,610 | $57,798 | $51,339 |
| FL | $63,130 | $52,905 | $51,140 |
| UT | $61,110 | $48,562 | $51,117 |
| HI | $70,160 | $54,299 | $49,995 |
| MT | $54,770 | $44,370 | $49,167 |
| MO | $51,210 | $41,858 | $45,615 |
Sources and assumptions
- Treat the numbers for this job as a midpoint, not a promise. The national middle is $66,770, 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.
- 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 $62,387.
- 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 — Missouri anchors the bottom at $45,615. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- These are distribution medians for transportation security screeners, with a national value of $66,770. 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.
- Retained-pay figures for transportation security screeners 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 $62,387, which leads in New Hampshire.
- Real-terms figures for transportation security screeners 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.