Occupation / job
Compliance Officers
Median annual pay. Half earn less than this.
Hourly at a standard 2,080-hour year. We do not yet have unpaid-time or cost data for this, so this is not an adjusted figure.
The middle half. A quarter earn below this range.
Source: BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 · view
What this figure cannot tell you
It covers people EMPLOYED in this occupation. Anyone who trained for it and was never hired is not in the median above, and neither is anyone doing the work self-employed. No verified count of qualified people exists for this occupation, so this page shows none rather than an estimate. Why that matters · The occupations where we could source it
Who this suits
At $80,730 against a $50,020 national midpoint, Compliance Officers pays 61% more than the typical American job — $30,710 a year of difference. Read the entry requirements before the number.
417,070 people work as Compliance Officers — large enough that the occupation is always hiring somewhere and always losing people somewhere else. Constant demand is security; it is rarely leverage.
Business operations work suits people who make a process legible to everyone who touches it — the deliverable is usually a decision someone else can now make quickly.
No verified preparation time is on file for Compliance Officers. The wage survey behind every figure on this page asks employers what they pay, not what they required, so the honest answer here is that we do not know.
Who should not do this
The quarters sit at $61,280 and $109,010 — 1.8x, or $3,977 a month apart. At that width the occupation contains genuinely different jobs, and which one you are being offered matters more than the title does.
Even the bottom quarter of Compliance Officers earns $61,280 — $29.46 an hour and $11,260 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Very little of this distribution is badly paid.
Avoid it if you need authority to match responsibility — much of this work is influencing people who do not report to you.
You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 417,070 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.
What the spread tells you
From $61,280 to $109,010 at a ratio of 1.8x is wide enough that two people with the same job title have materially different jobs. $80,730 sits in the middle of that and describes neither of them especially well.
In cash terms the middle half of Compliance Officers runs $61,280 to $109,010 — $47,730 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $80,730.
Getting to $109,010, the 75th percentile, is worth $28,280 a year more than the $80,730 midpoint and $47,730 more than the $61,280 a quarter of Compliance Officers settle for.
The climb from $80,730 to $109,010 is $28,280, against $19,450 down to $61,280. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Compliance Officers is larger than the realistic downside.
On a 2,080-hour year the midpoint for Compliance Officers is $38.81 an hour. The quarters sit at $29.46 and $52.40, and the all-occupation midpoint at $24.04.
What these figures are, and what they are not
The $80,730 figure is what employers pay employees. It is before tax and before deductions, it excludes the self-employed entirely, and it says nothing about anyone who does this work on their own account.
The hourly number on this page is $80,730 divided by a 2,080-hour year and nothing more. We hold no unpaid-hours or cost data for Compliance Officers, so it is arithmetic rather than an effective rate.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else