Audio and video technicians
Also called AV technician, Audio visual technician, AV tech, Event technician, Production technician
In brief
In May 2025, BLS counted 70,230 US audio and video technicians, with median pay of $58,100 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2021, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 22,000 from 1930, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for audio and video technicians: Hybrid event + streaming integration, 2020 to 2023. The pandemic-era disruption accelerated the shift toward hybrid event formats that became a durable feature of the post-2020 events landscape.
What the sources say
Official outlook
BLS projects employment to grow 3.9% from 2025 to 2035.
AI exposure studies
- 30% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. BLS publishes these counts as yearly survey snapshots and cautions against reading them as a precise trend.
Last updated .
Cite this page
Future History. (2026, October 11). Audio and video technicians: jobs and pay since 1930 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-4011
Future History. "Audio and video technicians: jobs and pay since 1930." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-4011.
@misc{futurehistory_27_4011, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Audio and video technicians: jobs and pay since 1930}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/27-4011}}, note = {Last updated 2026-10-11. Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35}, }
The access date is today's date on your device.
≈ $56,610 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)
November 2, 1920: KDKA in East Pittsburgh airs the first commercially licensed radio broadcast in the United States, the Harding-Cox presidential election returns. The technical team: Donald Little (chief engineer), William Thomas (station operator), Leo H. Rosenberg (announcer). Frank Conrad, the Westinghouse chief engineer whose garage station 8XK had been broadcasting music programs since 1916, was the conceptual architect of the format. The Westinghouse vice president of engineering and manufacturing, Harry Davis, had noticed a department store advertising radio receivers to pick up Conrad's amateur broadcasts and recognized the commercial opportunity. KDKA was licensed on October 27, 1920, one week before the historic broadcast.
NBC founds its network structure in November 1926, followed by CBS in 1927. Network radio creates a new class of AV technician work: the remote broadcast engineer who travels to a hotel ballroom, concert hall, or sporting venue, sets up a microphone chain and telephone line feed to the network, and ensures quality audio returns to the broadcast center. These engineers were the first AV technicians to work event-style rather than in fixed studios: they had to set up, operate, and strike equipment on a production schedule, exactly as modern event AV crews do.
Ampex releases the Model 200 professional reel-to-reel tape recorder, adopted almost immediately by ABC Radio and then NBC, CBS, and Hollywood studios. Bing Crosby's support of the technology (he wanted to pre-record his radio show rather than perform it live twice for East and West Coast time zones) drove its early adoption. The tape recorder transforms the AV technician's job in two ways: it creates a new post-production task (editing recorded tape by razor and splice) and it enables the broadcast of time-shifted content, ending the requirement that every broadcast be performed live by a studio floor crew.
August 15, 1965: The Beatles perform at Shea Stadium in New York before 55,600 people. The PA system, a handful of 100-watt Vox amplifiers fed through the stadium's public-address speakers, is completely inadequate for the venue size. The crowd noise is so loud that the Beatles cannot hear themselves play and stop tuning between songs. The concert is the most cited demonstration in live sound history of the gap between demand for large-scale concert performance and the state of sound reinforcement technology. It directly motivates the development of the touring PA industry through the late 1960s and 1970s.
Midas releases the PRO4 mixing console, which tours with Supertramp; Soundcraft releases the Series 1; Yamaha releases the PM1000. The mid-1970s crystallizes the mixing console as the central tool of the live sound engineer. For the first time, purpose-built production consoles are available that are not adapted from studio designs: they have higher input counts, more robust mechanical construction for road use, and gain structures optimized for live performance dynamics. The front-of-house engineer role, physically separated from the stage and placed in the audience to hear the mix from the listener's position, becomes standard on arena tours.
COVID-19 forces all live events to halt in March 2020. The live events industry, which employs a large share of AV technicians, loses nearly all work between March and September 2020. BLS OEWS data shows audio and video technician employment falls sharply in 2020. The industry rebuilds through 2021-22 around hybrid event formats that require AV technicians to manage simultaneous in-room and streaming signal chains, a new technical complexity that permanently expands the skill set required for corporate AV work. BLS OOH (2024-25 edition) cites the growth in corporate video conferencing and hybrid event formats as a specific positive demand driver for the occupation going forward.
Will AI replace audio and video technicians? What the research says
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, we show the disagreement rather than an average.
Each figure is stated by the named source; we publish no forecasts of our own. Where sources disagree, the spread is the honest signal.
What's changing day to day for audio and video technicians
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.
AI is sitting alongside you hereEdit and produce podcast or interview audio and video content using transcript-based AI editing: importing recordings into Descript, reviewing the auto-generated speaker-attributed transcript for accuracy, cutting the edit by deleting unwanted segments of text (removing filler words, off-topic digressions, and false starts in the transcript document), applying Studio Sound AI for noise removal and vocal enhancement in one click, and exporting the final multi-track mix and video export for distribution.
Edit and produce podcast or interview audio and video content using transcript-based AI editing: importing recordings into Descript, reviewing the auto-generated speaker-attributed transcript for accuracy, cutting the edit by deleting unwanted segments of text (removing filler words, off-topic digressions, and false starts in the transcript document), applying Studio Sound AI for noise removal and vocal enhancement in one click, and exporting the final multi-track mix and video export for distribution.[5],[6]
Descript has fundamentally changed the economics of podcast and interview content production. An interview that previously required several hours of manual audio editing now produces a polished cut in minutes via transcript editing, and the AI filler-word removal handles the most tedious part of that automatically. The competitive advantage is no longer in knowing how to work a DAW timeline for this format; it is in editorial judgment (which parts of the conversation are worth keeping, how to structure the story arc of an interview episode), audio quality assessment (catching over-processing, ensuring the Overdub voice clone sounds natural on correction lines), and client communication. Develop strong narrative judgment for interview content to complement the AI efficiency gains.
AI is sitting alongside you hereClean and restore spoken-word audio recordings for podcast, corporate video, or event recap deliverables using AI audio repair tools: uploading field recordings or interview audio to Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech V2, reviewing the AI-processed output for over-processing artifacts (consonant distortion, unnatural room uniformity, breath rhythm), adjusting source-separation stems to rebalance speech against residual ambient noise, and approving or flagging the result for manual correction before integrating the cleaned audio into the final mix.
Clean and restore spoken-word audio recordings for podcast, corporate video, or event recap deliverables using AI audio repair tools: uploading field recordings or interview audio to Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech V2, reviewing the AI-processed output for over-processing artifacts (consonant distortion, unnatural room uniformity, breath rhythm), adjusting source-separation stems to rebalance speech against residual ambient noise, and approving or flagging the result for manual correction before integrating the cleaned audio into the final mix.[7],[8]
Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech has compressed a task that previously required many minutes of skilled iZotope RX work per hour of audio into an automated pass. The remaining skill is quality assessment: AI enhancement consistently over-processes at default settings on certain microphone types and reverberant rooms, producing a recognizable "AI-cleaned" sound that sounds worse to trained ears than modest noise. Build a listening protocol on reference monitors that checks the three most common failure modes (consonant softening on plosives, artificial room uniformity between speaker turns, and breath-rhythm artifacts). The value add is now in identifying and correcting the AI edge cases, not in the baseline cleanup.
AI is sitting alongside you hereSource and integrate supplemental video footage for event recaps, corporate productions, and marketing content using AI video generation tools: using Runway Gen-4 to generate photorealistic B-roll clips (establishing shots, environmental cutaways, abstract visual transitions) from text prompts and reference images when pickups are impractical
Source and integrate supplemental video footage for event recaps, corporate productions, and marketing content using AI video generation tools: using Runway Gen-4 to generate photorealistic B-roll clips (establishing shots, environmental cutaways, abstract visual transitions) from text prompts and reference images when pickups are impractical; reviewing AI-generated clips for motion physics consistency, background coherence, and artifact presence before cutting them into the final deliverable.[9],[10]
Runway Gen-4 (released May 2026) generates synchronized audio-visual clips at quality sufficient for supplemental B-roll in corporate video and event recap productions, eliminating the need for expensive pickups when the coverage shot was missed or the location is unavailable. The quality assessment remains the critical skill: AI video generation fails predictably on consistent human faces across multiple clips, backgrounds with repeating patterns, and specific branded environments a client needs to recognize. Develop a QC protocol that previews every AI clip at full resolution on a calibrated monitor before cutting it into the sequence, and build a library of approved reference stills and location imagery so AI generation starts from concrete references rather than purely textual prompts.
Where audio and video technicians go next
Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.
- Producers and Directors
- US median pay
- $90,360 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +4%
- Broadcast TechniciansNo timeline for this role yet
- Sound Engineering TechniciansNo timeline for this role yet
What each move takes
Producers and Directors
Experienced AV technicians who have worked across many production contexts develop a comprehensive understanding of how production decisions upstream affect technical execution downstream, positioning them to move into production coordination or producing roles. Technicians who have operated at the intersection of client expectations and technical reality on dozens of events understand production scope, budget, and logistics in ways that are directly applicable to producing. AI tools (Runway Gen-4 for pre-vis, Descript for rapid edit turnaround, Adobe Podcast for remote interview production) are lowering the barrier to producing by compressing the technical execution overhead, making the pivot more accessible for technicians who have always had good production instincts but lacked the editorial or organizational toolkit. The transition is High difficulty because producing requires a distinct skill set in client negotiation, budget management, and creative oversight that technical work does not develop automatically.
- · Production budgeting and scheduling: breaking down a production into cost centers, negotiating crew rates, and managing against a line-item budget
- · Client management and creative brief development: translating a client's business objective into a production brief with measurable deliverables
- · AI-assisted pre-production: using Runway Gen-4 or Sora to develop visual references and concept videos that communicate production intent before shoot day
- · Casting and talent coordination for corporate video and event content: sourcing presenters, on-camera talent, and spokespersons
- · Post-production workflow oversight: managing the handoff from shoot to edit to delivery across multiple vendors or freelancers
How has the work of audio and video technicians changed since 1920?
The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.
Carbon microphone + crystal set transmitter (commercial radio era)
The first generation of broadcast technicians worked with carbon-button microphones, crystal-controlled or free-running vacuum-tube transmitters, and no mixing capability whatsoever: the performer stood at a single microphone and the engineer adjusted transmitter power and receiver sensitivity. Sound quality was extremely limited by the carbon microphone's frequency response (telephone quality); the technical operator's job was maintenance, calibration, and keeping the transmitter on the air rather than shaping sound. The first mixing panels, allowing multiple microphone inputs to be balanced, appeared in commercial radio studios by the late 1920s and gave the sound engineer a new creative tool: the ability to combine several sources into a broadcast feed.
Effect on the workKDKA's inaugural 1920 broadcast required three dedicated technical staff for a single hour-long program. As programming expanded to fill broadcast days, stations added dedicated technical shifts. NBC's 1926 network launch created demand for remote broadcast engineers who could set up a transmitter chain at a hotel ballroom or concert hall and feed audio back to the network.
Television camera + multicamera switching + condenser microphone (broadcast television era)
The resumption of commercial television licensing after World War II created a new technical crew role that had not existed in radio: the video engineer and vision mixer who operated cameras and live-switched between multiple feeds. The audio technician's job gained new complexity too, as boom microphone placement (avoiding frame edges), sound-to-picture synchronization, and the management of live studio audiences all became real problems requiring continuous on-set judgment. Condenser microphones, which provided far better frequency response than the old carbon types, became standard in television studio production by the early 1950s, allowing audio technicians to capture a broader and more accurate sound palette. The Ampex reel-to-reel tape recorder (1948) gave broadcast technicians a new tool for delayed replay and archival.
Effect on the workEach television station's technical floor crew typically comprised several technical positions per broadcast shift: a floor director, audio engineer, camera operators, video engineer, and transmitter operator. The launch of the three major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC) and hundreds of local stations through the 1950s created the largest single wave of new AV technician hiring in the occupation's history up to that point.
Concert touring PA + analog mixing console (live sound reinforcement era)
The Woodstock festival in August 1969 and the Beatles' 1965 Shea Stadium concert made the inadequacy of existing sound reinforcement painfully obvious: large crowds could not hear the performers. Clair Brothers, founded in Lititz, Pennsylvania, became one of the first dedicated touring PA hire companies after impressing Frankie Valli with their system around 1966. Through the 1970s the triple-system PA approach (left, right, and center hang clusters) became standard for arena shows. Midas developed the PRO4 mixing console in 1974, Soundcraft released the Series 1, and Yamaha launched the PM1000, giving touring sound engineers professional tools purpose-built for live reinforcement rather than adapted studio gear. The front-of-house sound engineer became a recognized craft role, with named engineers traveling with major acts as permanent technical members of their touring crew.
Effect on the workThe growth of the concert touring industry through the 1970s and 1980s created a new segment of the AV technician workforce that operated outside the broadcast structure entirely: freelance touring engineers, crew chief positions, and monitor engineers who worked exclusively in live performance environments. The emergence of dedicated PA rental and staging companies (Clair Brothers, Showco, VARI-LITE) created stable employer relationships for technicians who had previously worked show to show.
Digital audio (CD, MIDI, ADAT, Pro Tools) + corporate AV projection
The compact disc launched in 1982 and MIDI protocol standardized in 1983 together began the transition of audio production from purely analog to hybrid analog-digital workflows. The Alesis ADAT (1991) brought affordable digital multitrack recording to project studios and small production facilities; Digidesign Pro Tools (first version 1989, widely adopted through the 1990s) moved professional audio editing from tape splicing to a non-linear digital workstation. For AV technicians, the corporate events and hotel meetings market expanded dramatically through the 1980s as the convention industry grew, creating stable employment for hotel-based AV technicians and staging company crews who set up projectors, screens, and sound systems for presentations and trade shows.
Effect on the workDigital audio workstations compressed the time required for audio editing and post-production significantly compared to tape-based workflows: a task that required razor-and-splice editing on a tape machine could be accomplished in minutes on a DAW. However, through the 1990s this productivity gain largely expanded the volume of work rather than reducing headcount, as cheaper digital production enabled more content creation across the growing corporate and event sectors.
IP networking + digital consoles + flat-panel displays (AV-over-IP era)
The 2000s saw the convergence of professional AV with IT networking. Digital mixing consoles (Yamaha PM5D, DiGiCo SD-range) replaced analog signal chains in live event and broadcast applications, enabling recall of complete show settings and remote control over networked connections. IP-networked AV distribution (Dante protocol, from Audinate, launched commercially 2006) allowed audio to travel over standard Cat5/6 Ethernet rather than dedicated signal cable, transforming how AV systems were designed and installed. Flat-panel displays replaced CRT monitors and then projector screens in corporate boardrooms and event venues, creating a new segment of installation and commissioning work for AV integrators and their technician staff.
Effect on the workDigital console recall eliminated one of the most time-intensive tasks in live event AV: the re-setup of complex mixing scenes for recurring events. A corporate touring show that previously required a full day of audio line-check could now recall its previous show file and verify in hours. This productivity gain did not significantly reduce headcount but reshaped skill requirements: modern AV technicians needed both audio and IT networking competency.
Podcast DAW + streaming platforms (consumer audio production era)
The podcast explosion, which accelerated after Serial (2014) made the format mainstream and Spotify's acquisition of Gimlet Media (2019) signaled the format's commercial scale, created a new tier of AV technician work: podcast production, remote interview recording, and audio-for-video content. This segment was less capital-intensive than broadcast or live events, enabling many AV technicians to serve individual creators and small media businesses rather than only large production companies or venues. GarageBand, Adobe Audition, and then Descript made competent spoken-word audio production accessible with a laptop and a USB microphone, which simultaneously democratized the output and compressed the rate that clients would pay for basic production work.
Effect on the workThe podcast and streaming content boom expanded the population of AV technician work available while simultaneously creating a large pool of non-professional producers who handled their own basic audio. This bifurcated the market: high-production-value shows and corporate content continued to hire professional AV technicians, while the long tail of independent podcast and video creators produced their own audio, suppressing rates at the entry level.
Hybrid event + streaming integration (COVID-driven format shift)
The COVID-19 pandemic forced the live-events industry to shut down completely in March 2020 and rebuild as hybrid: simultaneous in-room and streaming audiences, NDI video-over-IP integration, and Zoom/Teams/StreamYard as broadcast delivery platforms. AV technicians who had worked exclusively in physical venues were now required to manage two parallel signal chains in real time, one for the physical room and one for the streaming audience with different latency, codec, and monitoring requirements. BLS OEWS data shows employment of audio and video technicians fell sharply in 2020 as live events ceased and partially recovered in 2021-22 as hybrid formats became standard.
Effect on the workThe pandemic-era disruption accelerated the shift toward hybrid event formats that became a durable feature of the post-2020 events landscape. Corporate meeting planners and conference organizers now routinely expect hybrid capability from their AV providers, raising the technical complexity of what had previously been straightforward room-sound setups and creating demand for technicians who understood both physical AV and streaming infrastructure.
AI audio/video production tools (Descript, Adobe Podcast, Waves StudioVerse, Runway Gen-4)
The 2023-2026 generation of AI production tools has compressed post-production task time for spoken-word audio and corporate video more dramatically than any previous technology shift in the occupation's history. Descript reduces podcast assembly from several hours to minutes via transcript-based editing and one-click Studio Sound noise reduction. Adobe Podcast Enhance Speech V2 converts noisy field recordings to broadcast-quality speech in seconds. Waves StudioVerse AI recommends professional mixing chain presets from a single audio scan, eliminating the manual plugin-selection initialization step. Runway Gen-4 (released May 2026) generates photorealistic B-roll clips with native audio. These tools are not eliminating AV technician jobs in the live-event segment, where physical presence and real-time judgment remain irreplaceable; they are compressing junior-level hours in the post-production and podcast segment, shifting the value concentration toward quality assessment, editorial judgment, and client management rather than technical execution.
Effect on the workAI post-production tools are most directly displacing entry-level AV technician hours in podcast editing, basic audio cleanup, and corporate video post-production. BLS projects growth for the broader broadcast/sound/video technician group from 2024-2034, slower than average, in part because AI-assisted production tools are reducing the labor content of each deliverable even as overall content volume grows.
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In other countries
The latest figure each country's statistics agency publishes for this job. Each uses its own occupation definition, survey basis and currency, so the numbers are not directly comparable with each other or with the US figures.
Canada (NOC 52113)
- Employment, 2020
- 25,070, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 52113 Audio and video recording technicians, Canada, reference year 2020. A recipients basis (anyone with employment income during the year), slightly broader than a point-in-time employed count. Statistics Canada Open Licence.
- Median pay, 2020
- C$57,200, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 52113 Audio and video recording technicians, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1930 | 22,000 | n/a | Est., FCC Researched context | Report |
| 1950 | 48,000 | n/a | Est., IATSE Researched context | Report |
| 1975 | 72,000 | n/a | Est., ProSoundWeb Researched context | Report |
| 1990 | 95,000 | $24,000 | Est., Medium / AV industry history (employment) Researched contextEst., IATSE Broadcast Department (pay) Researched context | Report |
| 2003 | 37,370 | $30,810 | BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic | Report |
| 2004 | 40,050 | $32,570 | BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic | Report |
| 2005 | 40,390 | $32,940 | BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic | Report |
| 2006 | 40,360 | $34,840 | BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic | Report |
| 2007 | 40,360 | $36,050 | BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic | Report |
| 2008 | 45,200 | $38,050 | BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic | Report |
| 2009 | 46,070 | $39,100 | BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic | Report |
| 2010 | 47,510 | $40,540 | BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic | Report |
| 2011 | 49,180 | $41,630 | BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic | Report |
| 2012 | 54,310 | $41,850 | BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic | Report |
| 2013 | 56,440 | $41,250 | BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic | Report |
| 2014 | 60,200 | $41,780 | BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic | Report |
| 2015 | 62,460 | $41,440 | BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic | Report |
| 2016 | 69,670 | $42,230 | BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic | Report |
| 2017 | 72,740 | $42,190 | BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic | Report |
| 2018 | 75,940 | $43,770 | BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic | Report |
| 2019 | 73,960 | $45,910 | BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic | Report |
| 2020 | 62,360 | $47,920 | BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic | Report |
| 2021 | 50,590 | $48,820 | BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic | Report |
| 2022 | 56,110 | $50,660 | BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic | Report |
| 2023 | 66,700 | $51,640 | BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic | Report |
| 2024 | 70,080 | $54,830 | BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic | Report |
| 2025 | 70,230 | $58,100 | BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic | Report |