---
title: "First-Line Supervisor of Correctional Officers"
description: "Directly supervise and coordinate activities of correctional officers and jailers."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-correctional-officers"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# First-Line Supervisor of Correctional Officers

**Category:** Protective Service · **SOC code:** 33-1011 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 33-1011.00

Directly supervise and coordinate activities of correctional officers and jailers.

Also advertised as: Correctional Officer Captain; Correctional Supervisor.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $77,970 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $37.49/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $52,330 to $127,780, with the middle half between $59,890 and $103,320
- **Total US employment:** 53,380
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Some preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** -2.5% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 3,700 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 53/100 — a NueCareer heuristic over O\*NET work activities and context, not a BLS or O\*NET figure

## Pay

National wage distribution, BLS OEWS, May 2025, across 53,380 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $52,330 |
| 25th | $59,890 |
| 50th (median) | $77,970 |
| 75th | $103,320 |
| 90th | $127,780 |
| Mean (average) | $84,380 |

### Pay by state

The 15 highest-paying states, by median annual wage. The cost-of-living-adjusted column divides the state median by that state's BEA Regional Price Parity, so the columns answer different questions: the first is what the job pays there, the second is what that pay buys there.

| State | Median annual wage | Cost-of-living adjusted | Employment |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| CA | $131,210 | $118,506 | 4,550 |
| NJ | $117,450 | $107,945 | 1,340 |
| UT | $110,410 | $111,679 | 340 |
| NV | $107,260 | $107,283 | 190 |
| MA | $105,930 | $100,164 | 460 |
| IL | $105,450 | $105,494 | 2,860 |
| NY | $103,320 | $95,737 | 3,380 |
| OR | $99,890 | $96,642 | 610 |
| WA | $98,910 | $92,428 | 1,400 |
| AK | $98,420 | $96,152 | 300 |
| HI | $97,200 | $88,403 | 60 |
| MN | $96,720 | $98,072 | 750 |
| WI | $96,260 | $102,301 | 800 |
| PA | $94,600 | $96,954 | 1,520 |
| CT | $89,160 | $86,053 | 490 |

34 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 49 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-correctional-officers/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-correctional-officers.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 56,300 in the 2025–2035 base year to 54,800 by the end of the cycle — a loss of 1,400 jobs, or -2.5%. Declining: -2.5% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 3,700 openings a year are expected on average, counting openings from growth as well as from workers leaving the occupation permanently. Source: BLS EP, 2025–2035.

## How to get in

- **Typical entry education:** High school diploma or equivalent (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Some preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Three: Medium Preparation Needed".
- **Related work experience typically required:** Less than 5 years.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** None.

### Education people in this job actually hold

O\*NET surveys incumbents, so this distribution describes who is in the job today and can differ from the BLS entry requirement above.

| Education level | Share of workers |
| --- | --- |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 59.0% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 22.9% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 10.7% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 5.2% |
| Some College Courses | 2.3% |

## What the work involves

- Maintain knowledge of, comply with, and enforce all institutional policies, rules, procedures, and regulations.
- Complete administrative paperwork or supervise the preparation or maintenance of records, forms, or reports.
- Instruct employees or provide on-the-job training.
- Supervise activities, such as searches, shakedowns, riot control, or institutional tours.
- Resolve problems between inmates.
- Supervise and direct the work of correctional officers to ensure the safe custody, discipline, and welfare of inmates.
- Monitor behavior of subordinates to ensure alert, courteous, and professional behavior toward inmates, parolees, fellow employees, visitors, and the public.
- Convey correctional officers' or inmates' complaints to superiors.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Transferable skills

These are the skills that carry into other occupations, and they drive the related-occupation and career-change rankings on this site.

- Social Perceptiveness — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Public Safety and Security — importance 4.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Psychology — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administrative — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

## Who it suits

O\*NET rates every occupation on the six Holland (RIASEC) interest areas, on a 1–7 scale. This occupation's strongest areas are Enterprising (E), Conventional (C), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 6.32 |
| C — Conventional | 5.06 |
| S — Social | 4.54 |
| R — Realistic | 3.58 |
| I — Investigative | 1.80 |
| A — Artistic | 1.00 |

### Personality fit

These scores are **derived by NueCareer**, not published by any government agency: they are cosine similarities between a personality type's trait profile and this occupation's O\*NET interest and work-style ratings, expressed 0–100. Treat them as a starting point for exploration, not as evidence that a type belongs in a job.

| Type | Fit score (0–100) |
| --- | --- |
| ESFJ | 84.9 |
| ESTJ | 83.8 |
| ISFJ | 68.3 |
| ISTJ | 62.2 |
| ESFP | 61.3 |

Best-fitting types: ESFJ, ESTJ.

## Related occupations

O\*NET's primary related occupations, in its own ranked order.

- [Correctional Officer and Jailer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/correctional-officer-and-jailer) — median $58,940
- [Probation Officer and Correctional Treatment Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/probation-officer-and-correctional-treatment-specialist) — median $66,270
- [First-Line Supervisor of Security Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-security-workers) — median $55,940
- [First-Line Supervisor of Police and Detectives](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-police-and-detectives) — median $106,040
- [Police Officer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/police-officer) — median $76,210
- [Detective and Criminal Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/detective-and-criminal-investigator) — median $93,790
- [First-Line Supervisor of Office and Administrative Support Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-office-and-administrative-support-workers) — median $69,500
- [Bailiff](https://nuecareer.com/careers/bailiff) — median $56,600
- [First-Line Supervisor of Entertainment and Recreation Workers, Except Gambling Services](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-entertainment-and-recreation-workers) — median $48,560
- [First-Line Supervisor of Passenger Attendants](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-passenger-attendants) — median $62,840

## Sources

- **O\*NET** — O\*NET 31.0 Database, August 2026. https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html
- **BLS OEWS** — BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025. https://www.bls.gov/oes/
- **BLS EP** — BLS Employment Projections, Table 1.2, 2025–2035. https://www.bls.gov/emp/
- **BEA RPP** — BEA Regional Price Parities by State, 2024. https://www.bea.gov/data/prices-inflation/regional-price-parities-state-and-metro-area

---

This bank includes information from the O\*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). O\*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA. NueCareer has transformed the data by joining it to BLS wage and projection data and deriving facet, personality-fit and AI-resilience scores. BLS and BEA data are public domain (17 U.S.C. §105).

O\*NET content is used under [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). How these figures are sourced and derived: https://nuecareer.com/careers/methodology

JSON representation of this page: https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-correctional-officers