When I wrote the police officer article a few months back, I leaned on my neighbor, the retired Palo Alto PD sergeant who talks over the fence about pension math and staffing numbers. For this one I don’t have a firefighter next door. But I do live in a state that burned. The LA fires in January 2025 destroyed tens of thousands of homes, displaced entire communities, and put the fire service on national television for weeks. Watching that coverage while simultaneously reading federal survey data showing firefighters earn less than dental hygienists is a dissonance I can’t resolve. I’ll just present the numbers and let you sit with it.
This is article fourteen. If you’ve been reading from the beginning you know the drill: federal survey data, state-by-state breakdown, what the numbers miss, and my honest opinion about who’s getting a good deal and who isn’t.
The federal survey number
Median annual wage for firefighters is $59,530 as of May 2024. There are about 344,900 career firefighter jobs, with growth projected at 3% through 2034 and roughly 27,100 openings per year (mostly from retirements). The national mean is around $60,390.
For context, here’s where that sits against similar occupations. Registered nurses: $99,840. Police and sheriff’s patrol officers: $79,320. Paramedics and EMTs: $57,450. Security guards: $40,440.
Firefighters earn less than cops. That surprised me when I first saw it and it still surprises me every time I look at the comparison. The gap is about $20,000 at the median nationally, and it’s consistent across most states. I asked my cop neighbor about it once and he shrugged and said fire departments have better schedules. Maybe. We’ll get to that.
State-by-state
The highest-paying states for firefighters by mean annual salary:
California leads at $87,890. Fourteenth article, fourteenth time California is first. At this point I should just pre-write that sentence and paste it in. New Jersey is second at $84,850. Washington third at $83,630. New York at $80,950 and Illinois rounds out the top five at $75,610.
The bottom: Mississippi is last, as always, though I should note that the survey data for Mississippi firefighters is tricky because so much of the state relies on volunteer departments that don’t show up in wage statistics. Louisiana, West Virginia, Arkansas, and Kentucky are all in the low $40Ks.
The range is wild. A firefighter in California earns roughly double what one earns in Mississippi. After cost-of-living adjustment (I wrote a whole article on this: best states to work) the gap narrows but doesn’t close; California firefighters still come out ahead of most states even at the state’s 110.7 RPP. New Jersey is arguably the best deal in the country for firefighters because the salary is nearly as high as California’s and the cost of living, while elevated, isn’t California-level.
Washington continues to impress across every occupation I cover. Third in firefighter pay, no state income tax, RPP that’s manageable. I’ve said it in the software developer and cost-of-living articles and I’ll say it again: Washington might be the best overall state for workers in America right now.
Why the survey number is wrong (the same way it’s wrong for cops)
I made this argument in the police article and it applies here with even more force.
Firefighter compensation is pension-heavy. Most career departments offer defined benefit pensions with a multiplier around 2.5% per year of service. A firefighter who works 25 years retires at 62.5% of their final salary, for life, often with cost-of-living adjustments. Many can retire after 20 or 25 years, meaning they leave in their late 40s or early 50s.
Do the math on a California firefighter. Base salary of $88K (the mean). Pension at 62.5% after 25 years = roughly $55K per year, guaranteed, starting at age 50. If that firefighter lives to 80, the pension pays out $1.65 million. That’s a $55K annual benefit that the federal wage survey doesn’t count as part of compensation. Neither does it count employer pension contributions (typically 8-11% of salary), health benefits in retirement, or the disability benefits that come with the job.
Then there’s overtime. Firefighter overtime is structural, not occasional. Departments that can’t fill shifts (and that’s most of them right now) mandate overtime for the people they have. Some firefighters earn 20-30% of their base salary in OT. A firefighter with an $80K base pulling $20K in overtime has a W-2 of $100K, but the survey wage data reflects the base, not the W-2.
Add it up. Base salary + overtime + pension value + health benefits in retirement. The real compensation for a mid-career firefighter at a well-funded department is probably 50-80% higher than the survey number suggests. A California firefighter earning $88K base is probably receiving $130-150K in total compensation value. That’s still less than a nurse, but it’s a lot closer.
The schedule factor
Firefighters typically work 24 hours on, 48 hours off. That’s ten 24-hour shifts per month, or roughly 56 hours per week. But about a third of that time is sleeping, eating, training, or maintaining equipment at the station. The actual “working” hours are hard to pin down because it depends entirely on call volume.
This schedule means firefighters have two out of every three days off. Plenty of them use those days for second jobs, contracting, or side businesses. I’ve seen estimates that 30-40% of career firefighters work secondary employment. That income doesn’t show up in any salary database but it’s real money that the schedule makes possible. A firefighter who’s also a licensed electrician or runs a landscaping business on off days can earn $20-40K extra per year.
Cops don’t get this. Most police departments run 8 or 12-hour shifts with rotating schedules that make second employment harder. My neighbor confirmed this when I brought it up; he said he knew firefighters who were contractors on the side and “they were doing fine.”
The volunteer crisis
This is the part that worries me.
About 65% of America’s firefighters are volunteers. In rural and suburban areas it’s higher. The entire fire protection system in most of the country runs on people who do this for free or close to it. And that system is collapsing.
Volunteer numbers have dropped 25% since 1984 while the U.S. population has grown 40%. The NFPA reported 676,900 volunteer firefighters in 2020, the lowest number ever recorded. In New York, the numbers fell from about 120,000 to somewhere between 70,000 and 80,000 in just a few years. Six volunteer departments in New York shut down entirely in 2025 because they couldn’t staff a single crew. One department on Long Island (Floral Park Center) closed its doors weeks before the CBS story ran. Others are pooling resources with neighboring departments just to get a truck out the door.
The FDNY used to draw 60,000 applicants for its firefighter exam. The most recent exam got 20,000.
I keep coming back to the parallels with policing. In the cop article I cited IACP data showing 70% of agencies reported hiring was harder than five years prior, and departments were at 91% staffing. The fire service is in the same spot, maybe worse, because at least police departments pay their officers. Volunteer departments are asking people to risk their lives, complete 130+ hours of training, and show up at 2 AM for zero dollars.
The reasons volunteers are disappearing are the same reasons volunteers are disappearing from everything: people work longer hours at their paid jobs, commute further, have less free time, and can’t afford to live in the communities they’d serve. A 25-year-old in 1985 could buy a house in a small town on a single income and have time to volunteer at the fire department. A 25-year-old in 2026 is working two jobs, renting, and commuting 45 minutes. The math doesn’t work anymore.
Communities are converting to career departments, but that costs money. Maumee, Ohio passed a property tax levy generating $2.9 million for fire staffing. Towns across the country are doing similar things, but it’s a hard sell to taxpayers who’ve gotten fire protection for free for decades.
The part nobody wants to talk about
Cancer is now the leading cause of death among firefighters, ahead of heart attacks and ahead of dying in fires. CDC data shows firefighters have a 9% higher risk of developing cancer and a 14% higher risk of dying from it compared to the general population. At the California Firefighters Memorial ceremony last year, nearly half of the 82 honorees had died from job-related cancers.
The culprits are everywhere. Burning structures release carcinogens. Firefighting foam (AFFF) contains PFAS, the “forever chemicals” that have prompted over 9,000 lawsuits and billions in settlements. And here’s the part that’s hard to stomach: the protective gear itself, the turnout gear that’s supposed to keep firefighters safe, is loaded with PFAS too. When firefighters sweat (which is always, because they’re fighting fires), their skin absorbs more chemicals. Every five-degree increase in body temperature raises skin absorption by 400%.
Most states now have “presumption laws” that treat firefighter cancers as job-related for workers’ comp purposes. California has one of the strongest. But even with presumption laws, cities routinely deny claims. A San Jose firefighter and paramedic named Kenneth Allen was diagnosed with a rare cancer, had his workers’ comp claim denied twice, waited three years for a settlement, saw his cancer return, had his health insurance cut, and had to sell his house. California’s presumption law says his cancer should be presumed work-related. The city fought it anyway.
Indiana doesn’t even have a presumption law. A pilot study released in November 2025 confirmed that Indiana firefighters had elevated PFAS levels in their blood. Bills were filed. None made it out of committee.
I’m not going to tell you how to feel about any of this. I’ll just note that the person responding to your house fire earns less than the person cleaning your teeth, is absorbing carcinogens through their skin, and if they get cancer their employer may fight the claim. The salary data is the salary data. The context around it matters too.
Comparing with the cop article
Since this is the companion piece to the police officer article, here’s the side-by-side.
Police officers earn about $20K more at the median nationally ($79,320 vs $59,530). The gap is consistent across states. Both jobs have pension-heavy compensation that the survey undercounts. Both are dealing with staffing crises. Both involve shift work.
Where they differ: firefighters generally have better schedules (24/48 vs rotating 8/12s), more opportunity for secondary employment, and higher public trust (firefighters consistently rank as the most trusted profession in polling). Police face more daily interpersonal conflict and higher rates of PTSD from different sources. Firefighters face higher occupational cancer risk.
If someone asked me which job offers better total lifetime compensation, I’d probably say police at most departments because of the base salary gap. But if they asked which offers a better quality of life, I’d say it depends entirely on the specific department, city, and state. The firefighter who works 24/48 at a busy but well-staffed department in New Jersey earning $85K base with a side contracting business is doing extremely well. The one working mandatory overtime at an understaffed department in Louisiana for $42K is not.
The ranks matter
One thing I didn’t emphasize enough in the cop article that I want to get right here: the salary range within the fire service is wide. A probationary firefighter and a battalion chief at the same department might earn $50K and $130K respectively. Captain and lieutenant positions typically pay 20-35% above base firefighter salaries. Getting promoted matters a lot to lifetime earnings.
The paramedic credential also matters. Firefighter/paramedics consistently earn more than firefighters without the certification, sometimes 10-15% more. Many departments now require it for hire. If you’re considering the career, getting your paramedic license before applying gives you a significant advantage in both hiring and starting salary.
Full occupation data at firefighters, paramedics, EMTs, police officers, correctional officers, and security guards. State hubs for California, New Jersey, Washington, New York, and Illinois have every protective service occupation ranked.