As readers, you know first hand that At the Ready has always been about supporting first responders, but how many of you have been on the other side of the equation? Not many, I am sure, though I have.

In 2013 I fell from a ladder, 18 feet down onto pure concrete; I lay there with four skull fractures, most of my brain bleeding, and my XVIII Cranial Nerve severed--my head hit first. I was in bad shape and I would have died had my son not immediately called 911. They arrived and started treating me in about 4 minutes.

The plain truth is that every year EMTs across the country save thousands and probably tens of thousands of lives. So, how much is that worth to you? I already have my answer--I am not a statistic, but one of those lives.

With that in mind, please think about your own answer when we tell you that, in 49 states and Washington D.C., the mean salary of an EMT or Paramedic is not a living wage. And on top of it, for two of those states, the mean salary of EMTs and Paramedics is over $20,000 less than the living wage.

At least the mean salary in Alaska is close to the living wage at only $110 less. Speaking of "only," Washington is the only, yes, ONE AND ONLY, state where the mean salary for an EMT or Paramedic exceeds the living wage. In fact, the mean salary in Washington is $14,049 more than the living wage for the state. Whereas, in Virginia, the mean salary is $20,954 less than the state’s living wage. In Wisconsin, it is $20,270 less, and finally in Florida, it is an astounding $20,546 less.

In 22 states the mean salary is between $15,000 and $20,000 less than the living wage. In 20 states the mean EMT or Paramedic salary is $10,000 to $15,000 less than the living wage. In Idaho the mean salary is $8,441 less than the living wage and in Alaska it is only $110 less than the living wage.

The map below shows that very comparison of mean salaries to the living wage in each state:

Except for in Washington and Alaska, EMTs and Paramedics need to find other sources of income or work as many overtime hours as possible to meet their family’s basic needs. In separate work, the BLS found that in 2016, among American married-couple families, in 48 percent of families both the husband and wife were employed; in 19.5 percent of married-couple families only the husband was employed, and in 7.1 percent only the wife was employed. The impact of the EMT or Paramedic not being paid a living wage will vary, of course, depending upon the category in which the family falls. If the spouse of the EMT or Paramedic also works, they probably do not have much of a problem making ends meet. The impact of not being paid a living wage is lessened by the spouse’s additional income.

What follows is a table that shows the annual mean wage of EMTs and Paramedics in each state, the hourly mean wage, the state living wage, the living wage +/- and the number of overtime hours EMTs and Paramedics need to work to make a living wage which will hopefully demonstrate the vastness of the problem at hand.

Editor's Note: We used mean salary Data from BLS and the Living Wage data from MIT’s living wage model; if you'd like to scrutinize our methology, then please click here for an in-depth article detailing it.


About the Author

Mike Kennedy is a frequent contributor to At the Ready Magazine. He is a former Airborne Ranger Infantryman and after the Army spent fourteen years working for the U.S. Army Maneuver Battle as an Experimentation Manager, where he routinely worked with Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, Robotic Systems-Joint Project Office, Aviation and Missile Research Development and Engineering Center and numerous other government labs to develop and test new equipment and concepts designed to make Soldier’s lives better. At the Battle Lab, Mike managed and supervised the execution of experiments, data collection procedures, analysis of raw data and presentation of results in written form for Army decision makers. He personally planned, coordinated, and executed more than 80 unmanned systems experimentation events. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from American Military University. Mike’s professional training includes the Test and Evaluation Basic Course, Project Management, Scheduling and Cost Control, Advanced Techniques of Project Management, Fundamentals of Systems Acquisition Management, Capabilities Based Planning, Business Case Analysis, and the Army Capabilities Development Course.