Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers
What the pay figures show
- Washington pays this job the most, at $41,010. Unusually, it stays on top. Tax does not overturn it. Nor do local prices — it is still first at $32,361 once levelled out. That is rarer than it sounds. For most jobs the leader changes.
- Washington leads for ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers at $41,010 and retains the position through both adjustments, finishing first at $32,361 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
$32,910
People doing it
121,770
Highest paid
$41,010
WA
Best off, really
$32,361
WA, after tax and prices
Lowest tenth
$23,560
Highest tenth
$42,470
Lowest, really
$21,259
AL
States with data
50
National average
$33,080
mean, not median
Prices where it goes furthest
108.56%
WA, against a national 100
Where this job actually pays best
- Where you do this job matters enormously. The best state pays roughly twice what the worst does. Prices alone cannot explain a gap that size. Level everything out and the range still runs $21,259 to $32,361.
- About 121,770 Americans work in this job, on a middle wage of $32,910. Big enough that where you live changes the arithmetic.
- This job is not published everywhere — 50 jurisdictions have a figure, with $32,910 in the middle. Where one is missing, it was never released. Washington tops the ones that are.
- Geographic dispersion in ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers is unusually wide: the top state's median is approximately double the bottom's, a spread that price differentials cannot account for. The real-terms range, after tax and price deflation, still runs $21,259 to $32,361 — so the variation reflects genuine differences in local labor markets rather than a nominal illusion.
- With 121,770 workers, ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers sits in the middle of the BLS headcount distribution. The state-level spread described above therefore applies to a meaningful population rather than a niche one.
- 50 jurisdictions carry a published median for ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers. ⚠️ Suppression is not random: it correlates with small state-level samples, so the reported set skews toward larger employers of this occupation.
Pay band: Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers
The national median for this job
50thpercentile, roughly
| Lowest tenth earn under | $23,560 |
|---|---|
| Half earn under | $32,910 |
| Top tenth earn over | $42,470 |
| This salary | $32,910 |
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 Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers
The national median for this job
$32,910around the 50th percentile
| Lowest tenth | $23,560 |
|---|---|
| Middle | $32,910 |
| Top tenth | $42,470 |
The five points BLS publishes. Nothing between them is invented.
Ushers, Lobby Attendants, and Ticket Takers, state by state
The national median for this job
50states publish pay for this job
| Lowest | Mississippi · $21,570 |
|---|---|
| Highest | Washington · $41,010 |
| Spread | $19,440 |
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 | $26,610 |
|---|---|
| Worth, after local prices | $27,384 |
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 | $41,010 | $35,132 | $32,361 |
| MT | $34,420 | $28,975 | $32,108 |
| CO | $38,380 | $32,038 | $31,601 |
| ME | $35,850 | $29,817 | $30,708 |
| MO | $32,350 | $27,590 | $30,067 |
| AK | $34,680 | $30,045 | $29,539 |
| SD | $29,430 | $25,827 | $29,317 |
| TN | $30,550 | $26,727 | $28,889 |
| IL | $34,560 | $28,383 | $28,712 |
| MN | $33,480 | $28,109 | $28,561 |
| DC | $37,930 | $31,547 | $28,471 |
| NY | $37,110 | $30,591 | $28,423 |
| CA | $37,870 | $31,958 | $28,387 |
| CT | $34,940 | $29,382 | $28,337 |
| RI | $34,040 | $28,675 | $28,275 |
| NJ | $35,990 | $30,556 | $28,063 |
| NH | $33,970 | $29,475 | $27,979 |
| AR | $28,050 | $24,127 | $27,890 |
| ND | $27,840 | $24,536 | $27,702 |
| AZ | $32,510 | $27,892 | $27,587 |
| ID | $29,360 | $25,068 | $27,419 |
| NC | $30,260 | $25,795 | $27,401 |
| OH | $28,540 | $25,043 | $27,277 |
| MI | $30,530 | $25,664 | $27,249 |
| NV | $30,110 | $26,373 | $27,195 |
| MD | $34,020 | $28,263 | $27,185 |
| LA | $27,750 | $24,016 | $27,184 |
| NM | $28,230 | $24,563 | $27,175 |
| WY | $27,800 | $24,503 | $26,972 |
| GA | $30,820 | $26,005 | $26,892 |
| NE | $28,260 | $24,244 | $26,826 |
| WI | $28,780 | $24,739 | $26,573 |
| DE | $31,200 | $26,084 | $26,281 |
| MA | $33,940 | $28,074 | $25,937 |
| OR | $34,110 | $27,153 | $25,929 |
| OK | $26,260 | $22,554 | $25,546 |
| IN | $27,440 | $23,427 | $25,413 |
| PA | $29,130 | $24,692 | $25,325 |
| IA | $25,720 | $22,425 | $25,263 |
| SC | $26,490 | $23,196 | $24,894 |
| KS | $26,690 | $22,388 | $24,886 |
| FL | $29,130 | $25,586 | $24,732 |
| KY | $25,930 | $22,173 | $24,510 |
| TX | $26,610 | $23,523 | $24,207 |
| VA | $28,580 | $24,261 | $24,081 |
| HI | $30,640 | $25,788 | $23,744 |
| UT | $26,650 | $22,370 | $23,547 |
| WV | $23,400 | $20,349 | $22,667 |
| MS | $21,570 | $18,602 | $21,310 |
| AL | $22,360 | $19,127 | $21,259 |
Sources and assumptions
- A median is the middle of the range, not a starting salary and not an offer. Half of this job 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 $32,910.
- 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 Washington, at $35,132.
- 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 — Alabama anchors the bottom at $21,259. The wage data and the price data also come from different years, because that is how each is published.
- Figures are medians of the published wage distribution for ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers, not entry-level or offer wages. The national median is $32,910, 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 ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers 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 $35,132, which leads in Washington.
- Real-terms figures for ushers, lobby attendants, and ticket takers 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.