Time Machine

Lifeguards and ski patrollers

Name: Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers: employment and wages since 1930
Creator: Future History
License: https://futurehistory.earth/terms

Official title Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers (SOC 33-9092)

Also called Lifeguard, Ski patroller, Ski patrol, Beach lifeguard, Pool lifeguard

In brief

In May 2025, BLS counted 157,550 US lifeguards and ski patrollers, with median pay of $33,580 a year. Of the BLS counts since 2004, the May 2025 count is the highest. The earliest figure here is an estimate of 12,000 from 1930, not measured the same way as today's count. The last full technology era for lifeguards and ski patrollers: Computer-vision drowning detection, 2004 to 2020.

What the sources say

Official outlook

BLS projects employment to grow 5.5% from 2025 to 2035.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

AI exposure studies

16% 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. 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 11 October 2026.

Cite this page

APA

Future History. (2026, October 11). Lifeguards and ski patrollers: jobs and pay since 1930 [Data set; data as of BLS OEWS May 2025; BLS Employment Projections 2025-35]. https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/33-9092

Chicago

Future History. "Lifeguards and ski patrollers: 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/33-9092.

BibTeX

@misc{futurehistory_33_9092, author = {{Future History}}, title = {Lifeguards and ski patrollers: jobs and pay since 1930}, year = {2026}, month = oct, howpublished = {\url{https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/33-9092}}, 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.

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1850187519001925195019752000now

2026

Known then as Life-Saver / Surfman (US Life-Saving Service coastal station crews)

Known then as Life-Saver / Surfman (US Life-Saving Service, independent agency)

Known then as Lifeguard / Life Saver (Red Cross Lifesaving Corps era, pool and beach)

Known then as Lifeguard / Ski Patroller (dual profession: aquatic guards + NSP ski patrol)

Known then as Lifeguard / Ski Patrol / Recreational Safety Worker

Known then as Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers (BLS SOC 33-9092)

Known today as Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers (BLS SOC 33-9092)

Projected to still be called Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers (BLS SOC 33-9092)

Data from the May 2025 survey

US Employment

158K

Est.

Stated in source: BLS OEWS

Official statistic

Report an error

Median Annual Wage

$33,580

Est.

≈ $32,719 in 2024 prices (derived by us, CPI-adjusted)

Official statistic

Report an error

Beat · 1848

August 14, 1848: President Polk signs the Newell Act, establishing the first federal lifesaving stations along the New Jersey coast. Funding provides for unmanned stations stocked with surfboats and line-throwing equipment administered by the Revenue Marine. The stations are the legal and institutional origin of professional water rescue in the United States.

Beat · 1878

Sumner I. Kimball reorganizes the lifesaving service into the independent US Life-Saving Service within the Treasury Department. Under Kimball's direction over the next 37 years, the USLSS grows to 280 stations and is credited with saving approximately 175,000 lives. Surfmen undergo standardized drills and carry the first professional rescue certification in US history.

Beat · 1914

February 1, 1914: Wilbert E. Longfellow establishes the American Red Cross Life Saving Corps, aiming to "waterproof America" and cut the annual drowning toll of more than 9,000 deaths. Longfellow creates the first national lifeguard certification standard and trains volunteers who organize into community beach and pool guard corps. His program eventually reduces the national drowning rate substantially over the following decades.

Beat · 1938

The National Ski Patrol is officially chartered in Stowe, Vermont, when Roger Langley (National Ski Association president) persuades Charles Minot Dole to nationalize the Mt. Mansfield Ski Patrol. Dole had been motivated by the death of a friend from skiing injuries in 1936 and his own serious injury on-slope the same year. Within 12 years, Dole builds NSP to 300 patrols and 4,000 members, establishing the ski patrol as a standard feature of American ski resorts.

Beat · 1945

Veterans of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, recruited partly through NSP membership screening by Charles Minot Dole, return from World War II and many open ski resorts across Colorado, Utah, California, and the Pacific Northwest. The post-war ski resort boom drives rapid expansion of paid and volunteer ski patrol positions, tying the occupation's growth to the resort industry for the next 80 years.

Beat · 1960

Modern CPR is developed by combining mouth-to-mouth resuscitation (Safar and Elam, 1956) with closed-chest cardiac massage, producing the first effective non-surgical cardiac arrest response. Within two decades the technique is integrated into mandatory lifeguard curricula by the Red Cross and YMCA. CPR fundamentally expands what a lifeguard can do between a rescue and the arrival of paramedics, and the ability to perform CPR remains a universal certification requirement for the occupation today.

Beat · 1964

California surf lifeguard agencies found the United States Lifesaving Association (USLA) predecessor organization, the Surf Life Saving Association of America, to standardize ocean safety and rescue and compete in international lifesaving competition. USLA grows into the national professional body for beach lifeguarding, establishing guidelines on guard-to-beach ratios, equipment standards, and certification. USLA data from the 1960s already documents one drowning for every 2,004 rescues at guarded beaches, a ratio that would hold or improve in subsequent decades.

Beat · 1972

San Diego adds a Municipal Code section giving lifeguards the specific title of public officer with the right to arrest for misdemeanors and infractions, formalizing their law enforcement authority in California. Women are hired as lifeguards by major West Coast agencies through the 1970s, ending the male-only norm that had defined beach lifeguarding since the 1930s.

Beat · 2021

The national lifeguard shortage that began in summer 2021 closes thousands of pools and beaches across the United States. Causes included canceled Red Cross certification classes during the 2020 COVID lockdowns (creating a gap year in new certifications), the suspension of J-1 international exchange visitor visas that had filled many seasonal positions, and rising minimum wages at fast food employers that competed with guard pay. The American Lifeguard Association estimated as many as a third of the nation's public pools were still affected through the 2022 and 2023 summers. The shortage prompted dozens of cities to raise wages sharply, some states to lower the minimum lifeguard age to 15, and broad investment in accelerated training pipelines.

How to read this number

OEWS is a point-in-time survey snapshot, not a continuous time series; BLS advises against using it for year-over-year trend comparison.

Each dot is a cited figure over time; the dotted line only links them (values between aren't measured). Hollow dots are estimates.

Official statistic: Copied by a script from a statistics agency table or a published study's table, not retyped by hand. BLS figures and the forecast and exposure tables are also re-checked against that table on every data run. Researched context: Researched from the cited source rather than copied from it by a script, so it is not machine-checked yet. Spot a mistake? Each figure has a “Report an error” link.

How it began · 1848

The story of recreational protective service workers begins with a drowning problem so large it alarmed the federal government. On August 14, 1848, President James K. Polk signed the Newell Act, establishing the first unmanned lifesaving stations along the New Jersey coast south of New York Harbor to aid shipwrecked mariners. The stations, administered by the Revenue Marine, held boats and rescue equipment but no permanent crews. It was a start, not a solution. By 1871 Congress funded a proper Lifesaving Service, and in 1878 Sumner I. Kimball reorganized it into the United States Life-Saving Service, a standalone agency of the Treasury Department. From its 280 stations on the Atlantic, Pacific, and Great Lakes coasts, USLSS surfmen rescued an estimated 175,000 lives between 1878 and 1915. These surfmen, who hauled rescue lines through crashing surf and rowed into storms to reach stricken ships, were the direct professional ancestors of the lifeguard. The aquatic shift from maritime rescue to recreational supervision came with the 20th-century swimming boom. In 1914, a young newspaper reporter from Rhode Island named Wilbert E. Longfellow persuaded the American Red Cross to fund a Lifesaving Corps, with the stated aim of "waterproofing America." Longfellow believed the nation's drowning toll, which exceeded 9,000 deaths per year in the early 1900s, was a preventable public health crisis. His Red Cross Lifesaving Corps trained swimmers in rescue techniques and organized them into volunteer guard corps at public beaches and pools. Municipalities began hiring full-time professional lifeguards in the 1920s; the first fully-funded professional services appeared around 1930. The mountain half of the occupation came later. On a January day in 1936, a Connecticut insurance man named Charles Minot "Minnie" Dole fractured his ankle skiing and watched a friend die of injuries sustained on the same slope. Convinced that organized rescue on ski mountains was a matter of life and death, Dole persuaded the National Ski Association to charter a National Ski Patrol in 1938, beginning in Stowe, Vermont. By the time Dole retired as national director in 1950, he had built NSP into 4,000 members serving 300 patrols. The occupation has grown along two parallel rails ever since: the aquatic side driven by municipal pools, ocean beaches, and the postwar backyard-pool explosion; the ski side driven by resort expansion accelerated by veterans of the Army's 10th Mountain Division, who came home from World War II and opened mountains across the American West.

Cited forecasts · present → 2035

Will AI replace lifeguards and ski patrollers? 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 published forecasts say

Forecast change in the number of people doing this work, as published by each named source. Bars share one scale on every role, centred on zero and reaching the end at ±30%. Grey marks a small change, 3% or less either way.

BLS Employment Projections 2025-35

→ 2035

+5.5%

BLS National Employment Matrix, 2025-35 cycle, line for SOC 33-9092 (Lifeguards, ski patrol, and other recreational protective service workers): 162.0 thousand jobs in 2025, projected 170.8 thousand in 2035, a change of +8.9 thousand (+5.5%). Matrix employment counts all jobs in the occupation, including self-employed workers. The average for all occupations in this cycle is +3.5%.

Official statisticReport an error

How exposed is this work to AI (research measures)

Scores as published by each study. Each row says what it measures. These measure what AI could technically do, not forecasts of jobs lost.

Eloundou et al. (2023), "GPTs are GPTs"

2023 study · Share of tasks exposed to LLMs (β, human-rated)

16%

of tasks

What this measures

Published occupation-level exposure from the paper's occ_level.csv for O*NET-SOC 33-9092.00 Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers. Shown: human-rated β = 0.16, the share of the occupation's tasks an LLM could do in at least half the time at equal quality, counting tasks that need LLM-powered software at half weight (β = E1 + 0.5 × E2). Other published measures for this occupation: human-rated α (LLM alone) 0.08 and γ (all LLM-assisted) 0.24; GPT-4-rated β 0.08. This measures how much of the work an LLM could touch, not how many jobs disappear.

Official statisticReport an error

Today, in this role

What's changing day to day for lifeguards and ski patrollers

Three parts of your work where AI is already doing real lifting, and what stays yours.

AI is sitting alongside you hereLog incident reports, daily condition records, chemical test results, and equipment inspection findings using digital platforms

Log incident reports, daily condition records, chemical test results, and equipment inspection findings using digital platforms; AI-assisted systems now auto-populate timestamps, location data, and video clips into these records.^[1],[5]

Tools picking this up

Watchtower ↗

Where your edge is

Adopt the Watchtower or similar CAD platform your agency uses; accurate digital logs protect your facility legally and feed the incident analytics that drive staffing decisions.

AI is sitting alongside you hereTest and adjust pool water chemistry (chlorine, pH, alkalinity) on a regular schedule to keep levels within health-code limits

Test and adjust pool water chemistry (chlorine, pH, alkalinity) on a regular schedule to keep levels within health-code limits; automated sensor systems increasingly handle continuous monitoring and alert guards only when intervention is needed.^[1]

Where your edge is

Understand the manual test kit process as a backup to automated sensors; inspectors and auditors still expect lifeguards to interpret readings and correct drift without relying on an automated system.

AI is sitting alongside you hereScan assigned water zones continuously from guard towers or roving positions, cross-checking visual judgment against AI-assisted camera alerts from poolside drowning detection systems to identify swimmers in distress before they submerge.

Scan assigned water zones continuously from guard towers or roving positions, cross-checking visual judgment against AI-assisted camera alerts from poolside drowning detection systems to identify swimmers in distress before they submerge.^[1],[6],[7]

Tools picking this up

Poseidon Drowning Detection ↗LifeguardEye ↗

Where your edge is

Learn to triage and act on AI alert notifications quickly: the camera system flags location, but the lifeguard reads context (panicking bystander, disabled swimmer) and decides whether to enter the water.

Where lifeguards and ski patrollers go next

Natural next steps for someone with your foundation: not exits, evolutions.

Emergency Medical Technicians
US median pay
$44,470 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+5.8%
Exercise Trainers and Group Fitness Instructors
US median pay
$47,160 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+7.3%
Recreation Workers
US median pay
$36,560 (May 2025)
BLS outlook 2025-35
+4.3%

What each move takes

A direction you could grow

Emergency Medical Technicians

Lifeguards and ski patrollers already perform first aid, CPR, AED use, and patient assessment under emergency conditions. Completing an accredited EMT program (many hours) converts on-the-job clinical experience into a formal credential, opening full EMS employment with higher wages and year-round hours.

What you'd add

· NREMT or state EMT-Basic certification (120-150 hour accredited program)
· Airway management and oxygen administration
· Spinal immobilization and patient packaging
· Ambulance operations and radio communication protocols

What it takesSome new skills to pick up

Tools of the era

How has the work of lifeguards and ski patrollers changed since 1848?

The tools that defined the work, one line per era. Select an era to see how it reshaped the work.

Surf boat, line-throwing apparatus, and cork life preserver (US Life-Saving Service era)
The US Life-Saving Service equipped its coastal stations with standardized rescue gear: the Lyle gun (a cannon that fired a projectile carrying a rescue line to a stricken ship), the breeches buoy (a ring buoy with canvas shorts used to haul survivors along the line to shore), and the self-righting surfboat. These tools defined the craft of the life-saver: a team of six to eight surfmen trained relentlessly to launch a surfboat through pounding surf in the dark, reach a wreck, and return with survivors. The equipment was the difference between a successful rescue and a drowning. By the 1870s the Service had standardized the equipment across all stations and issued a training manual specifying drills for each tool. This is the first systematic professionalization of water rescue in the United States.
Red Cross rescue tube, reaching pole, ring buoy, and standardized lifesaving certification
When Wilbert Longfellow established the American Red Cross Lifesaving Corps in 1914, he introduced a portable, standardized toolkit for recreational water rescue: the reaching pole (for conscious swimmers close to the guard), the ring buoy (for throwing to a distressed swimmer), and the direct rescue technique where a trained guard enters the water and applies a cross-chest carry or armpit tow. The Red Cross also created the first nationally standardized certification system for lifeguards and water safety instructors, transforming an informal municipal practice into a credentialed profession. By the 1930s, Red Cross water safety courses had been completed by hundreds of thousands of Americans, establishing the certification model that still underpins professional lifeguarding today.
Modern CPR protocol, rescue tube, and the first AEDs (cardiac resuscitation era)
In 1960, Drs. Kouwenhoven, Safar, and Jude combined mouth-to-mouth resuscitation with closed-chest cardiac massage to create modern CPR. Within two decades the American Red Cross and YMCA built CPR into their mandatory lifeguard curricula, transforming what guards could do between a water rescue and the arrival of emergency medical services. The rescue tube (a flexible foam float connected to a strap worn by the guard) replaced the rigid reaching pole as the primary water-entry tool in most pool and ocean settings, reducing the risk of a panicked drowning victim pushing the guard underwater. The San Diego lifeguard service added scuba training in the 1960s for underwater search and recovery. The first portable defibrillators arrived in the 1970s; early AEDs became available in the late 1980s and began appearing at high-traffic aquatic facilities by the 1990s, adding cardiac arrest response to the lifeguard's expected scope.
Two-way radio dispatch, personal watercraft (PWC), and standardized AED requirements
Two-way radios made beach and ski patrol coordination fundamentally more effective: a lone guard in a tower could call for backup, a ski patroller could relay a location to the patrol headquarters, and incident command could be maintained across a large venue without runners or signal flags. Personal watercraft such as the Yamaha WaveRunner entered ocean lifeguard fleets in the 1990s, dramatically extending the range at which guards could intercept distressed swimmers and reducing response time at large surf beaches. By the late 1990s, California and New York had enacted rules requiring AEDs at public swimming pools and beaches with on-duty lifeguards, and the American Red Cross and USLA integrated AED operation into standard lifeguard certification curricula.
Computer-vision drowning detection (Poseidon, 2004 commercial launch)
Poseidon Technologies launched the first commercial underwater computer-vision drowning detection system around 2004 after decades of research and development. The system monitors a pool via overhead and underwater cameras, using motion analysis to detect a motionless person at the pool floor or in a fixed submersion posture, and triggers an audible alarm with swimmer location within several seconds. By the 2010s, Poseidon was deployed in hundreds of pools worldwide. This is the first tool in the history of the occupation that genuinely augments the lifeguard's primary surveillance task: scanning the water. The camera does not replace the guard, it creates an alert layer that catches distress in the blind spot between scan cycles.
AI drowning detection, GPS dispatch platforms, and autonomous rescue drones
After 2015 a second generation of AI-assisted tools entered the occupation. LifeguardEye and similar systems expanded on Poseidon's camera-based approach with zone-level real-time alerts sent directly to lifeguard wearables. Watchtower and comparable CAD platforms replaced paper incident logs with GPS-mapped digital records and real-time resource dispatch. Got-U, piloted at Palisades Tahoe ski resort in 2025, displays every on-duty patroller's live GPS position for incident commanders, eliminating the radio triangulation previously needed to dispatch the nearest available patroller. DJI Dock 3 autonomous drone stations, deployed at Val Thorens in France in 2026, allow a resort to launch a thermal-imaging aerial drone to an avalanche or lost-skier site within minutes without requiring staff to transport or hand-launch equipment. None of these systems perform the rescue; every one of them compresses the time between incident and response and reduces the guard's cognitive load on secondary tasks, freeing attention for the physical work that remains entirely human.

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Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers employment and pay by year

On record since1848

Latest US employment157,550 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Latest US median pay$33,580 (May 2025)Source: BLS OEWS May 2025Official statisticReport an error

Outlook+5.5% by 2035Source: BLS Employment Projections 2025-35Official statisticReport an error

View all 27 years of cited US data, each linked to its source

Year	US employment	Annual pay (median unless marked)	Source	Report
1930	12,000	n/a	Est., Watermen Brand Researched context	Report
1950	40,000	n/a	Est., Wikipedia Researched context	Report
1970	90,000	n/a	Est., Gohlke Pools Researched context	Report
1980	n/a	$8,500	Est., US Department of Labor Researched context	Report
2000	120,000	n/a	Est., O*NET Online Researched context	Report
2004	108,210	$16,540	BLS OEWS May 2004 Official statistic	Report
2005	107,620	$16,910	BLS OEWS May 2005 Official statistic	Report
2006	108,870	$17,160	BLS OEWS May 2006 Official statistic	Report
2007	107,420	$17,980	BLS OEWS May 2007 Official statistic	Report
2008	111,560	$18,450	BLS OEWS May 2008 Official statistic	Report
2009	115,640	$18,700	BLS OEWS May 2009 Official statistic	Report
2010	117,540	$18,840	BLS OEWS May 2010 Official statistic	Report
2011	123,140	$18,900	BLS OEWS May 2011 Official statistic	Report
2012	125,770	$18,950	BLS OEWS May 2012 Official statistic	Report
2013	130,700	$19,040	BLS OEWS May 2013 Official statistic	Report
2014	135,070	$19,090	BLS OEWS May 2014 Official statistic	Report
2015	141,670	$19,500	BLS OEWS May 2015 Official statistic	Report
2016	145,100	$20,290	BLS OEWS May 2016 Official statistic	Report
2017	145,660	$21,290	BLS OEWS May 2017 Official statistic	Report
2018	144,370	$22,410	BLS OEWS May 2018 Official statistic	Report
2019	143,940	$23,420	BLS OEWS May 2019 Official statistic	Report
2020	113,150	$25,020	BLS OEWS May 2020 Official statistic	Report
2021	114,320	$25,630	BLS OEWS May 2021 Official statistic	Report
2022	107,930	$27,270	BLS OEWS May 2022 Official statistic	Report
2023	123,560	$30,380	BLS OEWS May 2023 Official statistic	Report
2024	143,590	$33,720	BLS OEWS May 2024 Official statistic	Report
2025	157,550	$33,580	BLS OEWS May 2025 Official statistic	Report

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<p style="font-size:13px;margin:4px 0 0"><a href="https://futurehistory.earth/timeline/33-9092">Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers: jobs and pay over time</a>, from Future History</p>

See all roles in Protective Services

Where lifeguards and ski patrollers go next

Emergency Medical Technicians

Surf boat, line-throwing apparatus, and cork life preserver (US Life-Saving Service era)Surf boat1848–1914

Red Cross rescue tube, reaching pole, ring buoy, and standardized lifesaving certificationRed Cross rescue tube1914–1960

Modern CPR protocol, rescue tube, and the first AEDs (cardiac resuscitation era)Modern CPR protocol1960–1990

Two-way radio dispatch, personal watercraft (PWC), and standardized AED requirementsTwo-way radio dispatch1990–2015

Computer-vision drowning detection (Poseidon, 2004 commercial launch)Computer-vision drowning detection2004–2020

AI drowning detection, GPS dispatch platforms, and autonomous rescue dronesAI drowning detection2015–present

Lifeguards, Ski Patrol, and Other Recreational Protective Service Workers employment and pay by year

More in Protective Services