---
title: "Retail Loss Prevention Specialist"
description: "Implement procedures and systems to prevent merchandise loss. Conduct audits and investigations of employee activity. May assist in developing policies…"
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/retail-loss-prevention-specialist"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Retail Loss Prevention Specialist

**Category:** Protective Service · **SOC code:** 33-9099 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 33-9099.02

Implement procedures and systems to prevent merchandise loss. Conduct audits and investigations of employee activity. May assist in developing policies, procedures, and systems for safeguarding assets.

Also advertised as: Asset Protection Associate (APA); Loss Prevention Agent; Loss Prevention Associate (LPA); Loss Prevention Detective; Loss Prevention Investigator; Loss Prevention Officer; Loss Prevention Specialist; Retail Asset Protection Specialist.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $42,540 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $20.45/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $32,470 to $74,590, with the middle half between $35,420 and $54,910
- **Total US employment:** 81,500
- **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:** +3.0% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 22,600 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 38/100 — 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 81,500 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $32,470 |
| 25th | $35,420 |
| 50th (median) | $42,540 |
| 75th | $54,910 |
| 90th | $74,590 |
| Mean (average) | $48,070 |

### 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 |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| NH | $88,960 | $85,403 | 90 |
| DC | $88,570 | $80,591 | 80 |
| AL | $86,350 | $97,216 | 330 |
| NM | $64,940 | $70,425 | 650 |
| WI | $57,620 | $61,236 | 910 |
| VT | $57,490 | $58,688 | 60 |
| HI | $57,370 | $52,178 | 110 |
| AK | $56,120 | $54,827 | 400 |
| NJ | $54,950 | $50,503 | 3,520 |
| NV | $54,790 | $54,802 | 910 |
| RI | $54,630 | $53,412 | 60 |
| ND | $53,460 | $60,095 | 230 |
| MD | $52,780 | $50,286 | 930 |
| NY | $52,690 | $48,823 | 1,930 |
| OK | $52,360 | $59,606 | 150 |

37 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 52 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/retail-loss-prevention-specialist/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/retail-loss-prevention-specialist.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 82,100 in the 2025–2035 base year to 84,600 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 2,400 jobs, or +3.0%. About as fast as average: 3.0% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 22,600 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:** None.
- **Typical on-the-job training:** Short-term on-the-job training.

### 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) | 68.6% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 11.4% |
| Bachelor's Degree | 10.5% |
| Less than a High School Diploma | 5.2% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 4.3% |

## What the work involves

- Maintain documentation or reports on security-related incidents or investigations.
- Identify and report safety concerns to maintain a safe shopping and working environment.
- Implement or monitor processes to reduce property or financial losses.
- Verify proper functioning of physical security systems, such as closed-circuit televisions, alarms, sensor tag systems, or locks.
- Investigate known or suspected internal theft, external theft, or vendor fraud.
- Inspect buildings, equipment, or access points to determine security risks.
- Identify and report merchandise or stock shortages.
- Conduct store audits to identify problem areas or procedural deficiencies.

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Critical Thinking — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Listening — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Monitoring — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Active Learning — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Writing — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Learning Strategies — importance 2.9 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 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Instructing — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Service Orientation — importance 2.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Public Safety and Security — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Law and Government — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Education and Training — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Expression — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 3.8 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Inductive Reasoning — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Recognition — importance 3.6 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 Conventional (C), Enterprising (E), Realistic (R).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| C — Conventional | 5.67 |
| E — Enterprising | 4.77 |
| R — Realistic | 3.90 |
| I — Investigative | 3.44 |
| S — Social | 2.71 |
| 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 | 89.2 |
| ISTJ | 85.9 |
| ISFJ | 74.0 |
| ESFJ | 71.5 |
| ESTP | 62.2 |

Best-fitting types: ESTJ, ISTJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Loss Prevention Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/loss-prevention-manager) — median $141,900
- [Private Detective and Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/private-detective-and-investigator) — median $51,220
- [Security Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-manager) — median $106,660
- [First-Line Supervisor of Security Workers](https://nuecareer.com/careers/first-line-supervisor-of-security-workers) — median $55,940
- [Compliance Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/compliance-manager) — median $141,900
- [Financial Risk Specialist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/financial-risk-specialist) — median $117,330
- [Fraud Examiner, Investigator and Analyst](https://nuecareer.com/careers/fraud-examiner-investigator-and-analyst) — median $81,100
- [Security Guard](https://nuecareer.com/careers/security-guard) — median $38,020
- [Detective and Criminal Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/detective-and-criminal-investigator) — median $93,790
- [Gambling Surveillance Officer and Gambling Investigator](https://nuecareer.com/careers/gambling-surveillance-officer-and-gambling-investigator) — median $43,370

## 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/retail-loss-prevention-specialist