---
title: "First-Line Supervisor of Security Workers"
description: "Directly supervise and coordinate activities of security workers and security guards."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-security-workers"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# First-Line Supervisor of Security Workers

**Category:** Protective Service · **SOC code:** 33-1091 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 33-1091.00

Directly supervise and coordinate activities of security workers and security guards.

Also advertised as: Campus Safety Chief; Public Safety Manager; Public Safety Supervisor; Security Chief; Security Director; Security Guard Supervisor; Security Lieutenant; Security Shift Supervisor.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $55,940 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $26.90/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $37,300 to $92,260, with the middle half between $45,030 and $71,950
- **Total US employment:** 81,480
- **Typical entry education:** High school
- **Preparation required:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +3.7% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 6,800 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 52/100 — 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 81,480 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $37,300 |
| 25th | $45,030 |
| 50th (median) | $55,940 |
| 75th | $71,950 |
| 90th | $92,260 |
| Mean (average) | $59,900 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| DC | $83,710 | $76,169 | 710 |
| VT | $78,110 | $79,738 | 60 |
| AK | $73,500 | $71,806 | 260 |
| NH | $66,780 | $64,110 | 250 |
| MD | $63,690 | $60,681 | 1,640 |
| DE | $62,840 | $62,961 | 180 |
| WA | $62,510 | $58,413 | 1,800 |
| NM | $62,330 | $67,594 | 580 |
| NJ | $61,590 | $56,606 | 2,200 |
| IN | $61,520 | $65,917 | 1,620 |
| OR | $60,940 | $58,958 | 980 |
| VA | $60,790 | $60,126 | 2,120 |
| NY | $59,890 | $55,494 | 7,050 |
| AZ | $59,650 | $59,249 | 1,550 |
| IL | $59,540 | $59,565 | 2,370 |

39 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 54 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-security-workers/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-security-workers.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 82,700 in the 2025–2035 base year to 85,700 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 3,000 jobs, or +3.7%. About as fast as average: 3.7% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 6,800 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:** Little or no preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone 1-2: Very Little to Some 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 29.8% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 27.7% |
| Some College Courses | 26.1% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 11.4% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 5.0% |

## What the work involves

- Monitor the behavior of security employees to ensure adherence to quality standards, deadlines, or procedures.
- Assign security personnel to posts or patrols.
- Explain company policies and procedures to staff using oral or written communication.
- Investigate disturbances on the premises, such as security alarms, altercations, and suspicious activity.
- Monitor and authorize entry of employees, visitors, or other persons.
- Call police or fire departments in cases of emergency, such as fire, bomb threats, and presence of unauthorized persons.
- Advise employees in handling problems or resolving complaints from customers, tenants, detainees, or other persons.
- Train security personnel on protective procedures, first aid, fire safety, and other duties.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Critical Thinking — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 3.0 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.

- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Social Perceptiveness — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Persuasion — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Public Safety and Security — importance 4.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 4.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Personnel and Human Resources — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.4 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
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Near Vision — importance 3.9 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), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| E — Enterprising | 5.95 |
| C — Conventional | 5.10 |
| R — Realistic | 4.38 |
| S — Social | 3.57 |
| I — Investigative | 1.82 |
| 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ESTJ | 87.6 |
| ESFJ | 81.2 |
| ISTJ | 71.5 |
| ISFJ | 70.4 |
| ESTP | 64.5 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Security Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-manager) — median $106,660
- [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
- [First-Line Supervisor of Passenger Attendants](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-passenger-attendants) — median $62,840
- [Security Management Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-management-specialist) — median $83,050
- [First-Line Supervisor of Housekeeping and Janitorial Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-housekeeping-and-janitorial-workers) — median $49,100
- [Security Guard](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-guard) — median $38,020
- [First-Line Supervisor of Correctional Officers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-correctional-officers) — median $77,970
- [First-Line Supervisor of Mechanics, Installers, and Repairers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-mechanics-installers-and-repairers) — median $79,860
- [First-Line Supervisor of Material-Moving Machine and Vehicle Operators](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-material-moving-machine-and-vehicle-operators) — median $62,840
- [First-Line Supervisor of Non-Retail Sales Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-non-retail-sales-workers) — median $87,520

## 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-security-workers