Correctional officers and jailers
Also called Correctional officer, Corrections officer, Jailer, Detention officer, CO
In brief
In May 2025, BLS counted 380,500 US correctional officers and jailers, with median pay of $58,940 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2003, the highest was 457,550, in May 2010. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 35,000 from 1950, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for correctional officers and jailers: COMPAS risk-assessment algorithm + ProPublica 2016 exposé + Wisconsin v. Loomis 2016 (2007 to 2018). Risk-assessment algorithms did not directly reduce correctional officer headcount; they reshaped how officers understood their charges.
What the sources say
Official outlook
BLS projects employment to decline 7.4% from 2025 to 2035.
AI exposure studies
- 23.9% of this job's tasks are exposed to large language models. Not a forecast of job losses. Eloundou and others, 2023
- 0.6 estimated probability that the whole occupation could be computerised, over an unspecified number of years. Not a forecast of job losses. Frey and Osborne, 2013
Since the 2013 prediction
In 2013, Frey and Osborne put this job's probability of computerisation at 0.6. BLS counted 432,680 of these jobs in May 2013 and 380,500 in May 2025 (-12%, a change derived by Future History).
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. In May 2021 BLS changed how it estimates these counts (a model-based method using three years of survey data) and moved fully to the 2018 occupation codes, so part of a change across 2021 can come from the method rather than the work.
Last updated .
Cite this page
Future History. (2026, October 11). Correctional officers and jailers: jobs and pay since 1950 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/33-3012
Future History. "Correctional officers and jailers: jobs and pay since 1950." Data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35. Last modified October 11, 2026. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/33-3012.
@misc{futurehistory_33_3012, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Correctional officers and jailers: jobs and pay since 1950}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/33-3012}}, 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.
≈ $57,429 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)
Auburn Prison opens in Auburn, New York, becoming the second state prison in New York and the founding site of the Auburn System: the model that would define American corrections for the next century. Warden Elam Lynds organizes the institution around two rules: absolute silence and mandatory labor in prison workshops. Prisoners walk in the lockstep formation, eat communally, and are forbidden to speak. The people who enforce the silence are called keepers or turnkeys; they carry a large iron key, a leather strap, and the implicit authority of a state that has just institutionalized this new form of punishment. The striped prison uniform originates at Auburn. The architecture, radial cell blocks radiating from a central observation point, allows a small number of keepers to maintain visual control over a large population. Auburn becomes the template: Massachusetts, Ohio, England, and Canada all adopt variants of the system.
October 1870: Reformers led by Enoch Cobb Wines convene the first National Prison Association congress in Cincinnati. The 270 delegates (wardens, prison inspectors, reformers, judges) produce a Declaration of Principles that challenges the Auburn model's emphasis on punishment and proposes reformation as the primary goal of imprisonment. On the question of prison staff, the declaration argues that guards should be selected for character, trained for their duties, and compensated fairly: the first national statement that the people watching the cells had professional obligations, not merely custodial ones. The organization eventually becomes the American Correctional Association; the congress is the institutional birth date of the idea that "correctional officer" means something beyond "keeper."
September 9-13, 1971: The Attica Correctional Facility in New York erupts in a riot after months of prisoner grievances over living conditions, healthcare, and the treatment of a fellow inmate. Approximately 1,300 prisoners hold 42 staff hostage for four days. On the morning of September 13, Governor Rockefeller orders state police to retake the facility. In less than six minutes, troopers fire approximately 2,200 rounds into the yard and cell blocks. Forty-three people die: 33 inmates and 10 correctional officers and employees, all but one guard and three inmates killed by law enforcement gunfire, not by prisoners. The investigation that follows documents that the officers had received minimal training, had no use-of-force protocols, and were working in conditions that made the riot predictable. Attica is the inflection point that forces the modern professionalization of corrections: merit hiring, training academies, and eventually body-worn cameras for documentation.
New York Governor Rockefeller signs the Rockefeller Drug Laws: mandatory minimum sentences of 15 years to life for possession or sale of specified amounts of heroin, cocaine, or other narcotics. The laws, adopted in various forms by dozens of states and the federal government over the following two decades, are the legislative engine of mass incarceration: drug offenses, which had driven relatively few prison admissions before 1973, become one of the largest sources of new prisoners by the mid-1980s. The direct consequence for correctional officers: a permanent, decades-long demand shock. Every mandatory-minimum sentence is a guaranteed future prisoner, and every prisoner requires a guard. The officer workforce that stood at roughly 100,000 in 1972 would nearly quintuple by 2008.
The United States incarcerates approximately 2.3 million people, more than any other country in the world, and more per capita than any other democracy by a significant margin. The nation holds 5% of the world's population but 25% of its prisoners. The correctional officer workforce has reached approximately 478,000, nearly double its 1980 level, and five times its 1972 level. A BJS report this year documents that one in 100 American adults is behind bars. The demographics are starkly unequal: one in 15 Black men over 18 is incarcerated, compared to one in 106 white men. The officers watching these populations are managing the downstream consequence of three decades of mandatory-minimum sentencing, three-strikes laws, truth-in-sentencing requirements, and the War on Drugs. This is the high-water mark: from here, decarceration begins.
May 23, 2016: ProPublica publishes "Machine Bias," a data-driven investigation into COMPAS, the risk-assessment algorithm used by Broward County, Florida, and dozens of other jurisdictions to score defendants' likelihood of reoffending. The finding: Black defendants were labeled high-risk at nearly twice the rate of white defendants, and the algorithm proved only 61% accurate, barely better than chance, for the violent-crime predictions that carried the greatest sentencing weight. The investigation triggers a national debate about algorithmic justice that is still active in 2026. Later that year, the Wisconsin Supreme Court rules in State v. Loomis that using COMPAS scores at sentencing does not violate due process. For correctional officers on the floor, COMPAS's practical effect is invisible in daily work, but the risk label it assigns shapes which housing unit each prisoner lives in, which programs they can access, and when they become eligible for release, and therefore shapes the population the officer manages.
December 21, 2018: President Trump signs the First Step Act, the first major bipartisan federal criminal justice reform in a generation, supported by an unusual coalition of conservative libertarians and progressive civil rights advocates. The law requires the Federal Bureau of Prisons to develop and implement PATTERN (Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs) within 180 days, mandating that risk assessments drive not just security classification but access to education, vocational training, and drug treatment programs. The DOJ announces PATTERN in July 2019. Civil rights organizations immediately flag the same concern raised about COMPAS: potential racial disparity in the algorithm's outputs. For the ~38,000 officers who work in federal BOP facilities, PATTERN means they are now managing populations sorted by software, and that their daily escort and supervision duties are shaped by which inmates PATTERN has assigned to which programs.
March 2020: COVID-19 arrives in US prisons and jails. The Marshall Project and Associated Press track 398,627 confirmed prisoner infections and 2,715 prisoner deaths through mid-2021. Among correctional workers, 114,237 are infected and 209 die: staff death rates 2-3 times the general population rate at many facilities. States begin releasing prisoners at unprecedented rates: the US incarcerated population falls by approximately 230,000 in the single year between March and December 2020, the largest single-year decarceration in US history. Officers who survive the first wave face a second crisis: colleagues resign in large numbers, agencies report vacancy rates of 15-30% of authorized positions, and the pay is not competitive enough to attract replacements. The Federal Bureau of Prisons reports approximately 15% vacancy rates through 2022-2024. Multiple state systems operate below 70% authorized strength. The occupation enters a structural staffing crisis driven not by technology but by a pandemic, a labor market that now offers alternatives, and a public reckoning that changes who wants to work in corrections.
BLS projects -7% employment for correctional officers and jailers by 2034: one of the few occupations in protective services projected to shrink. The combined force of continued decarceration, post-COVID staffing reorganization, and modest AI-assisted monitoring tools points toward a smaller workforce managing a smaller incarcerated population. And yet the floor-officer function (the daily count, the pat-down, the escalation response in a confined space, the physical presence that is the primary deterrent in a locked institution) has not been touched by any technology deployed to date. COMPAS and PATTERN sort the population; body cameras document the encounters; AI cameras flag anomalies; but someone still has to walk the tier.
Will AI replace correctional officers and jailers? 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 correctional officers and jailers
Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.
AI is sitting alongside you hereMonitor AI-flagged alerts from communications surveillance platforms (phone call transcription and behavioral scoring systems) for evidence of planned violence, gang activity, contraband coordination, or criminal enterprise
Monitor AI-flagged alerts from communications surveillance platforms (phone call transcription and behavioral scoring systems) for evidence of planned violence, gang activity, contraband coordination, or criminal enterprise; route credible leads to investigators and document the chain of custody.[5],[12]
Treat AI-flagged communications as intelligence, not evidence: the model flags patterns it was trained to associate with risk, but its error rate is not publicly disclosed and algorithmic bias in predictive systems is a documented concern. Document your reasoning when you act on or dismiss a flag. This creates a defensible record and protects you if the flag turns out to be wrong.
AI is sitting alongside you hereProcess intake and release paperwork, maintain accurate housing assignment records, enter program participation and disciplinary data into the jail management system, and retrieve records in response to internal and legal requests.
Process intake and release paperwork, maintain accurate housing assignment records, enter program participation and disciplinary data into the jail management system, and retrieve records in response to internal and legal requests.[10],[2]
Treat the jail management system as the authoritative record. Discrepancies between the system and physical reality (a person recorded as housed in one unit but physically in another) are a safety and legal liability. Your job is catching those discrepancies, not data entry for its own sake -- the software is getting better at data entry faster than it is at physical verification.
AI is sitting alongside you hereWrite incident reports documenting use of force, rule violations, injuries, and unusual events
Write incident reports documenting use of force, rule violations, injuries, and unusual events; generate logs that comply with facility, state, and federal evidentiary standards and that will withstand scrutiny in disciplinary proceedings or civil litigation.[6],[10]
Use AI-assisted report generation to pull timestamps, camera references, and sensor data automatically, but never submit a report you have not reviewed word-for-word. Incident reports are legal documents; inaccuracies expose you personally and your agency institutionally. Accuracy review is a skill that becomes more important, not less, as AI drafts the first pass.
Where correctional officers and jailers go next
Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.
- Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists
- US median pay
- $66,270 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- +3%
- First-Line Supervisors of Correctional Officers
- US median pay
- $77,970 (May 2025)
- BLS outlook 2025-35
- -2.5%
What each move takes
Probation Officers and Correctional Treatment Specialists
Correctional officers who have worked directly with incarcerated people carry direct experience in behavior assessment, documentation, de-escalation, and navigating the criminal justice system -- all core to probation work. The pivot typically requires a bachelor's degree in criminal justice, social work, or psychology, which many COs pursue while working. The transition moves officers out of a facility into community supervision, substantially reducing physical risk and mandatory overtime exposure while opening a path to case management and rehabilitation-focused work.
- · Bachelor's degree in criminal justice, social work, or psychology (required by most agencies)
- · Case management fundamentals: structured assessment tools (LSI-R, ORAS), supervision plans, and caseload management
- · Motivational interviewing and trauma-informed communication for community supervision contexts
- · Report writing at the level required for pre-sentence investigation reports and violation of probation petitions
How has the work of correctional officers and jailers changed since 1817?
The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.
Iron key + strap + lockstep (the keeper's kit)
The Auburn system's correctional officer, called a keeper or turnkey, had three instruments of work: a large iron key for the cell locks, a leather strap for corporal punishment of silence violations, and his own physical presence enforcing the lockstep formation in which prisoners walked with their hands on the shoulders of the man in front. The architecture of Auburn and Eastern State Penitentiary (1829) was itself a tool: Auburn's radial cell-block design allowed a single officer to stand at the center and observe multiple tiers; Eastern State's panopticon-like corridors permitted visual surveillance of individual cells. These two architectural templates, Auburn's congregate-labor design and Eastern State's solitary-cell design, shaped every US prison built for the next century. The keeper was the enforcement node of an architectural system designed to minimize the number of eyes needed to watch the maximum number of prisoners.
Effect on the workThe silent system's enforcement structure required relatively few keepers per prisoner by later standards: Auburn operated in the 1820s-30s with a staff of many overseers for populations of hundreds of prisoners. The labor of prisoners in the workshops generated revenue that partially offset staffing costs: a model explicitly designed to make punishment economically self-sustaining.
ACA Declaration of Principles (1870) + telephone call system (early 1900s)
The National Prison Association's 1870 Declaration of Principles, the founding document of what became the American Correctional Association, introduced a concept that had not previously been applied to prison guards: the reformatory ideal. If the goal of incarceration was reformation of character rather than simple punishment, then the people responsible for the confined had a professional obligation, not just a custodial one. The declaration called for officers to be trained, compensated fairly, and selected for character. In practice, these ideals were largely ignored for decades, prison guard jobs were patronage appointments in most states through the 1930s, but the document established the philosophical vocabulary that professionalization advocates would use for the next century. Parallel to this, telephone intercom systems (installed in larger prisons by the 1910s-1920s) allowed central control rooms to coordinate guard positions across cell blocks without requiring physical runners.
Effect on the workThe reform impulse of the 1870-1940 period produced the first rudimentary training programs in some states (Massachusetts and New York were early movers) but had minimal effect on national staffing ratios or officer qualifications, most of which remained informal and politically appointed through the New Deal era.
Two-way radio + central control room + perimeter towers (post-WWII modernization)
World War II-surplus radio technology entered prison management in the late 1940s. Two-way portable radios, the same technology that had transformed police patrol, gave guards in large prisons a way to communicate in real time across sprawling cell blocks and yards without physically running to a post telephone. Central control rooms, equipped with radio consoles, wall-mounted annunciator panels, and in later years closed-circuit television monitors, became the nerve centers of modern correctional facilities. Perimeter guard towers, which had been a standard feature since the 1800s, were equipped with rifle-armed officers and communication links to the control room. This era also saw the first systematic use of CCTV in correctional settings (primarily at entry points, control rooms, and sally ports) driven by the same analog camera technology being deployed in banks and industrial facilities.
Effect on the workRadio communication allowed somewhat higher guard-to-prisoner ratios on large yards and corridors, as officers could summon backup rapidly. It did not reduce the absolute number of officers needed; it improved their response capability. The expansion of state prison populations through the 1950s and 1960s meant officer headcount grew steadily during this period regardless of technology changes.
Post-Attica professionalization: training standards, merit hiring, ACA accreditation (1974)
The Attica Prison riot of September 9-13, 1971 (in which dozens of people died [most of them inmates, the rest correctional officers and staff], all but one guard and three inmates killed by law enforcement gunfire during the state police retaking) forced a reckoning with correctional officer professional standards that the 1870 Declaration of Principles had articulated but never enforced. New York Governor Rockefeller's subsequent commission, and parallel state-level investigations elsewhere, documented that officers had received minimal training, were poorly supervised, had no clear use-of-force protocols, and had no institutional channel for raising safety concerns. The ACA founded its Commission on Accreditation for Corrections in 1974, establishing the first national voluntary standards for prison staff selection, training, and supervision. By the 1980s, most state systems had moved from patronage hiring to civil-service merit systems; pre-service training requirements (many hours of academy instruction) were codified in most states. Correctional officer unions (AFSCME and state-specific bargaining units) expanded rapidly in this period, driven by the danger of the post-Attica environment and the organizing momentum generated by the riot's casualties.
Effect on the workPost-Attica professionalization increased the per-officer cost of the workforce (higher salaries, training requirements, union contracts) without reducing the number of officers needed. The mass-incarceration wave of the 1980s-1990s ensured that any efficiency gains from better training were overwhelmed by the requirement for more bodies as prison populations grew.
Digital CCTV + electronic key + biometric access (surveillance infrastructure build-out)
The 1994 Crime Bill's $9.7 billion prison construction program generated a wave of new facility construction through the late 1990s and 2000s, and the new prisons were built with digital surveillance infrastructure from the start. Digital CCTV systems (IP cameras connected to DVR servers) replaced analog camera-and-VCR installations; electronic key systems (proximity cards and electronic locks, replacing physical keys for most interior doors) were installed in new and renovated facilities; biometric hand and fingerprint readers controlled access at sally ports. Electronic control of cell doors, previously operated by a officer physically pulling a lever or turning a key, transitioned to push-button electronic actuators at the officer's post, then to computerized master-control systems. A single officer at a central console could now manage cell-door operations for an entire housing unit that previously required officers at multiple posts.
Effect on the workElectronic door control and digital CCTV enabled modest reductions in posts required for routine cell management and corridor surveillance at modern facilities. In practice, the staffing gains from technology were largely absorbed by the growth in incarcerated population through this period; the net officer headcount continued rising through 2008.
COMPAS risk-assessment algorithm (Northpointe, deployed 2000s) + ProPublica 2016 exposé + Wisconsin v. Loomis 2016
COMPAS (Correctional Offender Management Profiling for Alternative Sanctions), developed by Northpointe (later Equivant), was adopted by Florida's Broward County for pretrial risk assessment in 2008 and spread to dozens of state systems through the 2010s. The algorithm scored defendants on recidivism risk using more than a hundred factors including criminal history, age, and social circumstances, and these scores were used by judges to inform bail, sentencing, and parole decisions. On May 23, 2016, ProPublica published "Machine Bias," an investigation that analyzed COMPAS scores for more than 7,000 Broward County defendants. The finding: Black defendants were labeled high-risk at nearly twice the rate of white defendants; Black defendants were 77% more likely to be flagged as future violent criminals; and the algorithm proved only 61% accurate, barely better than chance, for the violent-crime prediction that carried the most sentencing weight. In 2016, Eric Loomis challenged a Wisconsin state court's use of his COMPAS score at sentencing; the Wisconsin Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that using the algorithm did not violate due process, reasoning that judges used it as one factor among many. The US Supreme Court declined review. The COMPAS controversy established the central tension in algorithmic criminal justice: efficiency and consistency on one side; opacity, racial disparity, and the defendant's inability to challenge a proprietary algorithm on the other. For correctional officers, the practical effect was that the risk label attached to each person they supervised now arrived from a software system rather than a clinical assessment.
Effect on the workRisk-assessment algorithms did not directly reduce correctional officer headcount; they reshaped how officers understood their charges. A prisoner labeled "high risk" by COMPAS received more restrictive housing and fewer program opportunities: decisions made upstream of the floor officer but affecting the daily population the officer managed.
First Step Act + PATTERN risk-assessment tool (Federal BOP, 2019) + body-worn cameras (~50% adoption by 2024)
The First Step Act, signed December 21, 2018, required the Federal Bureau of Prisons to develop a new risk-and-needs assessment tool within weeks. The DOJ announced PATTERN (Prisoner Assessment Tool Targeting Estimated Risk and Needs) in July 2019, designed to classify all federal inmates on recidivism risk and match them with appropriate rehabilitation programs. Civil rights organizations raised immediate concerns about PATTERN's potential to perpetuate racial disparities; the DOJ responded with multiple revisions through 2020. For the first time, a federal statute required that risk-assessment scores be used not merely for security classification but to allocate rehabilitative programming, expanding the algorithm's role from predicting who might reoffend to prescribing who gets what intervention. Body-worn cameras, which had transformed policing after Ferguson (2014), began entering corrections more slowly: correctional environments present different challenges than street patrol (confined spaces, shower areas, medical care), and adoption lagged police by several years. By 2024, approximately half of state correctional systems had deployed some body-worn cameras, primarily for use-of-force documentation.
Effect on the workPATTERN and body-worn cameras both added administrative work to the correctional officer's role: PATTERN-driven programming required officers to escort inmates to new rehabilitation activities and to document compliance; body cameras required uploading footage and created accountability for use-of-force incidents that had previously gone undocumented. Neither reduced the floor-officer headcount requirement.
COVID staffing crisis + AI behavior-detection CCTV + decarceration policy pressure (the contraction era)
COVID-19 arrived in US prisons in March 2020 and spread rapidly through congregate facilities. The Marshall Project and Associated Press tracked 398,627 prisoner infections and 2,715 prisoner deaths by mid-2021; 114,237 correctional workers were also infected and hundreds of died. Staff infection rates were several times the general population rate at many facilities. The crisis accelerated early releases: the US incarcerated population fell between March and December 2020, the largest single-year decline in US correctional history. The staffing crisis that followed was partly pandemic-driven and partly structural: officers who left during COVID found better-paying, lower-risk work elsewhere. Simultaneously, the technology layer continued advancing: AI behavior-detection CCTV (systems that flag anomalous movement, potential fights, or falls without a human monitor watching) were adopted by some state systems in this period, though the correctional environment's particular challenges (controlled movement, multiple prisoners in frame, privacy constraints) slowed commercial deployment compared to hospitals or commercial buildings.
Effect on the workThe COVID era produced the first significant involuntary contraction of the correctional officer workforce since mass incarceration began: not through technology displacement but through pandemic-driven population decline, staff departures, and the inability to recruit replacements at wages competitive with the tightened post-COVID labor market. BLS projects a further decline through 2034 as decarceration continues and AI tools modestly reduce monitoring labor.
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Browse all rolesCorrectional Officers and Jailers employment and pay by year
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 43201)
- Employment, 2020
- 24,605, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021: number of persons with employment income in NOC 43201 Correctional service officers, 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$85,000, Statistics Canada Census 2021 Official statistic Report an errorStatistics Canada Census of Population 2021 (Table 98-10-0586): median employment income for NOC 43201 Correctional service officers, Canada, reference year 2020, full-year full-time workers (the basis comparable to the US OEWS full-time median). Statistics Canada Open Licence.
United Kingdom (UK SOC 3314)
- Employment, 2025
- 9,000, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14): employee jobs in SOC 3314 Prison service officers (below principal officer), United Kingdom, 2025 (ASHE "number of jobs", thousands x1000; excludes self-employment). Open Government Licence v3.0.
- Median pay, 2025
- £31,603, ONS ASHE 2025 Official statistic Report an errorONS Annual Survey of Hours and Earnings (Table 14.7a): median gross annual pay for all employee jobs in SOC 3314 Prison service officers (below principal officer), United Kingdom, 2025. Open Government Licence v3.0.
Australia (ANZSCO 4421)
- Employment, 2025
- 20,100, ABS Labour Force Survey Official statistic Report an errorABS Labour Force Survey (Detailed), table EQ08: employed persons in ANZSCO 4421 Prison Officers, national (summed across sex and state/territory), annual average of 4 quarterly estimates.
- Median pay, 2025
- A$108,160, ABS Employee Earnings May 2025 Official statistic Report an errorAnnualised (x52) from A$2,080 median weekly earnings. ABS Survey of Employee Earnings and Hours, May 2025: median pay for full-time non-managerial employees paid at the adult rate, before tax. Surfaced via the Jobs and Skills Australia occupation profile.
View all 28 years of cited US data, each linked to its source
| Year | US employment | Annual pay (median unless marked) | Source | Report |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1950 | 35,000 | n/a | Est., BJS Researched context | Report |
| 1972 | 100,000 | n/a | Est., BJS Researched context | Report |
| 1980 | 180,000 | $13,500 | Est., BJS (employment) Researched contextEst., Bureau of Labor Statistics (pay) Researched context | Report |
| 1990 | 282,000 | n/a | Est., BJS Researched context | Report |
| 2000 | 405,360 | $31,170 | BLS OEWS 2000 Official statistic | Report |
| 2003 | 417,420 | $33,160 | BLS OEWS May 2003 Official statistic | Report |
| 2004 | 409,580 | $33,600 | BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic | Report |
| 2005 | 411,080 | $34,090 | BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic | Report |
| 2006 | 417,810 | $35,760 | BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic | Report |
| 2007 | 431,980 | $36,970 | BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic | Report |
| 2008 | n/a | $38,380 | BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic | Report |
| 2009 | 455,350 | $39,050 | BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic | Report |
| 2010 | 457,550 | $39,040 | BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic | Report |
| 2011 | 448,740 | $38,990 | BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic | Report |
| 2012 | 434,870 | $39,040 | BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic | Report |
| 2013 | 432,680 | $39,550 | BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic | Report |
| 2014 | 434,420 | $39,780 | BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic | Report |
| 2015 | 427,790 | $40,530 | BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic | Report |
| 2016 | 431,600 | $42,820 | BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic | Report |
| 2017 | 428,870 | $43,540 | BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic | Report |
| 2018 | 415,000 | $44,330 | BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic | Report |
| 2019 | 423,050 | $45,180 | BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic | Report |
| 2020 | 405,870 | $47,410 | BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic | Report |
| 2021 | 392,600 | $47,920 | BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic | Report |
| 2022 | 363,250 | $49,610 | BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic | Report |
| 2023 | 351,420 | $53,300 | BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic | Report |
| 2024 | 365,380 | $57,970 | BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic | Report |
| 2025 | 380,500 | $58,940 | BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic | Report |
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