Salaries / Security Guard
Personal Care & Service · SOC 33-9032
Security Guard salary
Security guards patrol and protect property, people, and assets, often for events, buildings, and businesses.
California · 2025
Median annual (CA)
$43,240
Median hourly (CA)
$20.79
Typical range (CA)
$36,010 to $57,880
California source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics OEWS 2025.
National
Median annual
$38,020
Median hourly
$18.28
Typical range
$30,210 to $58,840
National source: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, OEWS 2025. Figures are gross pay and vary by location, employer, and experience.
The pay range, visually.
Low end (about the 10th percentile), median, and high end (about the 90th percentile).
By state, at a glance
These at-a-glance figures are estimates derived from the national median and a state wage index, shown to give a rough sense of local differences. Pick any state (here or in the selector above) to look up its real figures.
Your skills are a business
Ideas we have for people in personal care & service.
The same experience that earns a paycheck as a security guard can start a business. Here are real ideas from our marketplace that fit this field.
Start a Festival and Event Security Staffing Business
Provide and staff security for festivals, concerts, fairs, and private events: licensed event guards, crowd management, bag check, and access control, delivered through a properly licensed and insured company.
Start a Private Security Guard Company
Deploy licensed uniformed officers to businesses, retail properties, and residential communities on hourly contracts, billing the client account per guard-hour rather than maintaining an in-house security staff.
Build Guard License and Training Compliance Software for Security Firms
A compliance backbone for security guard companies: every guard's state license, renewal date, required training hours, and site certifications tracked with automated alerts, so no one is scheduled onto a post with an expired card.
Start a Digital Executive Protection Service
Guard the personal digital lives of executives and wealthy families: a digital executive protection service secures home networks, personal devices, accounts, and smart homes for high net worth households and family offices, on retainer, with monitoring and incident response the corporate security team never covers.
You could hire security guards, not just be one.
We have a staffing calculator to price the work and a full course on how to start a staffing agency, so you can turn a field you already know into a business that puts other people to work.