Occupation / job
Public Safety Telecommunicators
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
Public Safety Telecommunicators pays $53,040, a little over the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — $3,020 a year clear, or $1.45 an hour. A margin that size is worth having but is not on its own a reason to take on an entry requirement.
102,500 people are employed as Public Safety Telecommunicators. At that size there is a real ladder and enough churn that experience can be sold to a competitor rather than only accumulated where you are.
These roles suit people who like solving a logistics puzzle that changes every hour, and who can stay calm while several people wait on the answer.
We carry no verified training length for Public Safety Telecommunicators — BLS reports pay, not preparation, and we will not estimate it.
Who should not do this
A quarter of Public Safety Telecommunicators earn under $45,210 and a quarter over $64,260 — 1.4x, or $19,050 apart. Narrow spreads usually mean a pay schedule, which is stability bought at the price of upside.
At $45,210, or $21.73 an hour, the bottom quarter of this work lands within $4,810 of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — an unusually solid floor.
Avoid it if you need to finish a task before starting the next; that is not how this desk works.
No failure rate is shown, and the absence is deliberate: the 102,500 figure counts people already working as Public Safety Telecommunicators, not everyone who trained and never got hired. Without a licensing register to divide by, a rate here would be an invented denominator.
What the spread tells you
$45,210 to $64,260 is a 1.4x range. Ranges this tight usually mean the employer set is homogeneous — the same kind of organisation paying the same kind of scale — so the lever you have is geography rather than employer.
In cash terms the middle half of Public Safety Telecommunicators runs $45,210 to $64,260 — $19,050 a year between the 25th and 75th percentiles, against a midpoint of $53,040.
The 75th percentile is $64,260. Reaching it from the $53,040 midpoint is $11,220 a year; reaching it from the $45,210 that the bottom quarter of Public Safety Telecommunicators earn is $19,050.
The climb from $53,040 to $64,260 is $11,220, against $7,830 down to $45,210. Rather more of the range sits above the midpoint than below it, so the realistic upside in Public Safety Telecommunicators is larger than the realistic downside.
Per hour at a standard full-time year that is $25.50 at the midpoint for Public Safety Telecommunicators, $21.73 at the 25th percentile and $30.89 at the 75th, against $24.04 for the typical American job.
What these figures are, and what they are not
This is payroll data: it comes from employers, about people they employ. Anyone doing the work of Public Safety Telecommunicators for themselves is not in it, and there is no reason to assume $53,040 describes them.
With no unpaid-hours or cost data for Public Safety Telecommunicators, the hourly figure is $53,040 over a 2,080-hour year — a unit conversion, not an adjustment.
How this is calculated · Self-employment failure rates · What credentials cost and pay back · Look up something else