Security Guard Salary in New York 2026,
$44,240 Median | BLS Data by City

The published New York figure is $44,240 a year, or $21.27 an hour, per BLS OEWS May 2025, with a band from $35,650 at the 10th percentile to $60,580 at the 90th and quartiles at $37,210 and $51,850. That is 16.4% above the national median of $38,020. The row is SOC 33-9032, Security Guards — an exact match to the job title.

Ithaca at $49,540, then Syracuse $45,050, Kingston $44,790, Utica-Rome $44,420 and New York-Newark-Jersey City $43,980. The city is last. Its enormous supply of candidates for a job with a low entry barrier holds the wage down, while smaller upstate markets — particularly ones anchored by a university or a hospital campus — have to pay more to fill posts from a thinner labour pool.

Registration with the Department of State's Division of Licensing Services, preceded by an 8-hour pre-assignment training course. Once employed, a guard completes 16 hours of on-the-job training within the first 90 days and 8 hours of annual in-service training thereafter. Armed work requires an additional 47-hour firearms training course and a pistol licence issued under New York's own firearms rules. The registration is held by the individual and must be renewed.

Yes, and the requirements are the reason. The 47-hour firearms course, the annual firearms in-service requirement and a pistol licence together restrict the supply of eligible guards sharply, particularly in New York City where pistol licensing is administered restrictively. Armed and specialised posts are a substantial part of what sits between the $44,240 median and the $51,850 seventy-fifth percentile. The published band does not break the two out separately, so treat that as a directional statement rather than a measured premium.

It depends on which part of the band. The bottom of the ladder is compressed — $35,650 at the 10th percentile and $37,210 at the 25th — and turnover there is very high. The upper half, from the median to $60,580 at the 90th percentile, is a genuine career: armed and specialised posts, supervisory roles, and in-house security at hospitals, transit operators and large institutions rather than contract guarding. The registration regime and its recurring training hours are the mechanism for moving between the two.

Supply. New York-Newark-Jersey City has by far the most security posts in New York and the deepest pool of people who can fill them: the entry requirement is an 8-hour course and a registration, which is a low barrier in a labour market of that size. Ithaca at $49,540 is a small market where a university and a hospital compete for a limited number of registered guards. The location quotient of 1.68 across 134,700 jobs describes the demand side; the metro table describes what happens when supply is even more abundant than demand. Cost of living plays no part in wage-setting for an occupation with this much slack at the entry level.

That the first move matters more than the tenth. The distance from the 10th percentile at $35,650 to the 25th at $37,210 is negligible — years of unarmed contract guarding do not, on this evidence, move earnings much. The distance from the median at $44,240 to the 75th at $51,850 and the 90th at $60,580 is substantial, and it is bought with specific qualifications: the firearms course and pistol licence for armed work, or a move into in-house security at an institution that treats it as a permanent function rather than a purchased service. A guard planning a career should be aiming at that transition rather than at accumulating time.

It creates a floor of training that every guard in New York must clear and maintain: 8 hours before assignment, 16 on the job, 8 annually thereafter, administered under the Department of State's Division of Licensing Services. That has two effects visible in the data. It raises the state median above the national one, because there is a cost to employing anyone at all in this occupation here. And it creates a retention incentive for employers, because a lapsed registration means a guard cannot be posted — which is part of why New York's very large opening flow, at about 16,900 pro-rated a year, is not as purely churn-driven as an unregulated guarding market would be.