---
title: "Showrunner"
description: "Runs a television series day to day, leading the writers' room and making final creative and production decisions."
canonical: "https://nuecareer.com/careers/showrunner"
last-updated: "2026-10-09T10:57:55.138Z"
---

# Showrunner

**Category:** Arts, Design, Entertainment, Sports, and Media · **SOC code:** 27-2012 · **O\*NET-SOC code:** 27-2012.00

Runs a television series day to day, leading the writers' room and making final creative and production decisions.

Also advertised as: Executive Producer (Television); TV Showrunner; Head Writer; Series Creator; Co-Showrunner.

## At a glance

- **Median annual wage:** $90,360 (BLS OEWS, May 2025)
- **Median hourly wage:** $43.44/hr
- **Wage range (10th–90th percentile):** $45,780 to $198,540, with the middle half between $62,670 and $134,800
- **Total US employment:** 143,120
- **Typical entry education:** Bachelor's
- **Preparation required:** Medium preparation — O\*NET rates this "Job Zone Four: Considerable Preparation Needed"
- **Projected growth:** +4.0% over 2025–2035 (BLS EP, 2025–2035)
- **Annual job openings:** 12,100 openings a year
- **AI-resilience score:** 36/100 — 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 143,120 US jobs.

| Percentile | Annual wage |
| --- | --- |
| 10th | $45,780 |
| 25th | $62,670 |
| 50th (median) | $90,360 |
| 75th | $134,800 |
| 90th | $198,540 |
| Mean (average) | $113,300 |

### 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 | $129,790 | $117,224 | 34,110 |
| NJ | $119,840 | $110,142 | 2,970 |
| NY | $107,550 | $99,656 | 27,990 |
| DC | $104,270 | $94,876 | 2,640 |
| CT | $88,260 | $85,185 | 2,200 |
| OR | $87,460 | $84,616 | 1,640 |
| RI | $84,250 | $82,372 | 560 |
| WA | $81,550 | $76,206 | 2,270 |
| IL | $81,080 | $81,114 | 3,170 |
| MA | $80,970 | $76,562 | 3,440 |
| GA | $79,950 | $83,028 | 5,010 |
| FL | $79,920 | $77,282 | 7,160 |
| MD | $79,350 | $75,601 | 1,610 |
| NV | $78,480 | $78,496 | 1,630 |
| CO | $78,060 | $75,748 | 1,960 |

36 more states with published wage data are omitted here. The full table for all 51 states is at https://nuecareer.com/careers/showrunner/salary-by-state, or as JSON at https://nuecareer.com/api/v1/careers/showrunner.

## Outlook

BLS projects employment to move from 181,000 in the 2025–2035 base year to 188,300 by the end of the cycle — a gain of 7,300 jobs, or +4.0%. About as fast as average: 4.0% against 3.5% projected for all occupations over the same cycle. About 12,100 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:** Bachelor's degree (BLS Employment Projections).
- **Preparation level:** Medium preparation — O\*NET's preparation band for this occupation is "Job Zone Four: Considerable 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 |
| --- | --- |
| Bachelor's Degree | 56.7% |
| High School Diploma or the equivalent (such as a GED) | 15.2% |
| Associate's Degree or other 2-year degree | 12.9% |
| Post-Secondary Certificate | 10.6% |
| Some College Courses | 4.6% |
| Master's Degree | 0.0% |

## What the work involves

- Lead the writers' room and break season story arcs
- Rewrite scripts to maintain the show's voice
- Hire writers, directors and department heads
- Approve casting, design and production decisions
- Supervise editing, music and final cuts of episodes
- Manage budgets and schedules with the studio
- Present notes and plans to network executives

## Skills and knowledge

### Essential skills

- Active Listening — importance 4.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Reading Comprehension — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speaking — 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
- Writing — importance 3.8 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 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Coordination — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Time Management — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Management of Personnel Resources — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Judgment and Decision Making — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Systems Analysis — importance 3.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Complex Problem Solving — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Negotiation — importance 3.3 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Knowledge areas

- Communications and Media — importance 4.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- English Language — importance 3.9 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Telecommunications — importance 3.7 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Computers and Electronics — importance 3.6 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Administration and Management — importance 3.4 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Customer and Personal Service — importance 3.2 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale

### Abilities

- Oral Expression — importance 4.5 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Oral Comprehension — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Deductive Reasoning — importance 4.1 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Problem Sensitivity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Speech Clarity — importance 4.0 on the O\*NET 1–5 importance scale
- Written Comprehension — 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 Artistic (A), Enterprising (E), Social (S).

| Interest area | Score (1–7) |
| --- | --- |
| A — Artistic | 6.14 |
| E — Enterprising | 5.89 |
| S — Social | 3.67 |
| C — Conventional | 3.56 |
| I — Investigative | 2.24 |
| R — Realistic | 2.13 |

### 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) |
| --- | --- |
| ENFP | 77.7 |
| ENFJ | 74.4 |
| ENTP | 67.4 |
| ESFP | 65.1 |
| ENTJ | 60.4 |

Best-fitting types: ENFP, ENFJ.

## Related occupations

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

- [Producer and Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/producer-and-director) — median $90,360
- [Media Technical Directors/Manager](https://nuecareer.com/careers/media-technical-directors-manager) — median $90,360
- [Media Programming Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/media-programming-director) — median $90,360
- [Film and Video Editor](https://nuecareer.com/careers/film-and-video-editor) — median $75,420
- [Art Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/art-director) — median $114,850
- [Talent Director](https://nuecareer.com/careers/talent-director) — median $90,360
- [Broadcast Announcer and Radio Disc Jockey](https://nuecareer.com/careers/broadcast-announcer-and-radio-disc-jockey) — median $47,340
- [Writer and Author](https://nuecareer.com/careers/writer-and-author) — median $76,910
- [Music Director and Composer](https://nuecareer.com/careers/music-director-and-composer) — median $73,710
- [News Analyst, Reporter, and Journalist](https://nuecareer.com/careers/news-analyst-reporter-and-journalist) — median $62,200

## 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/showrunner