Industry Intel: 2018 Audio Engineer Salary & Jobs Report

Summer is almost upon us, and a new crop of audio students are being unleashed into the workforce once again. So as always, it’s time for us to review the just-released annual jobs data to find out where the best prospects in the audio industry lie.

As our regular readers know, late each Spring, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) releases its latest job numbers, which they collected in May of the previous year. The main figures we’ll look at today are based on their Occupational Employment Statistics (“OES”) survey, a questionnaire that is filled out by businesses about the workers that they employ.

It’s that time again. Read our new 2018 audio jobs report.

The main drawback of this survey is that it only tracks regular salaried employees. This means that it excludes both freelancers and the self-employed, and leaves out far more jobs than it includes.

Still, this data can help give us a sense for some averages and overall trends, and as always, we’ll supplement these numbers with data from the Current Population Survey (“CPS”) as well.

Although the CPS data is collected less frequently and the study is smaller in scale, it tracks the responses of individual workers, helping to account for both freelancers and the self-employed, and adding more detail to our annual report.

Let’s dive in and see what all these studies show about the number of jobs in audio, where they are, and just how much they pay.

How many jobs are there?

The first time we explored these numbers, way back in 2012, we found that despite all the stories of major studio closings, the number of jobs for “sound engineering technicians” actually increased by nearly 50% in the first decade of the 21st century.

The most recent projections from the BLS from here are for 8% job growth for “sound engineering technicians”, 13% growth for “audio and video equipment technicians” and job losses of -3% for “broadcast technicians” through period ending in 2026.

That said, if governments did a great job of predicting where markets were headed, there’s probably a major bubble or three that we could have avoided in recent memory. So we’ll take their estimates of where we’re going a little less seriously than their estimates of where we are and where we have been.

As far as the total number of current jobs, the OES survey of employers counts a bit under 14,000 salaried “sound engineering technicians” in the entire country this year. This is down nearly 10% from the roughly 15,000 figure released last year, and about level with the number released back in the 2016 report. But this only tells a small part of the story.

When we make an attempt to count freelancers and the self-employed by taking the most recent CPS survey into account, estimates for the number of people working in audio is something more like 134,000 nationwide—up from the 117,000 number issued in last year’s report.

This disparity in job numbers suggests a ratio of just under 10 freelancers for every 1 salaried “sound engineering technician”, and based on past reports, it looks like the proportion of freelance to salaried engineers is continuing to grow.

How much do these jobs pay?

By the time of our 2016 report, the BLS data showed that the median salary for audio engineers had reached $53,000.

That was a 77% increase from $30,000 just 15 years earlier, handily beating out the “official” inflation figure of 40% over the same period by a wide margin.

(Though of course, there is a reasonable case to be made for doubting the validity of the official inflation estimates. So take that with a healthy side of salt.)

The BLS now estimates that (following a brief pause in 2017), the median salary for audio engineers has risen again, to just shy of $56,000 this past year. That’s an increase of about 6% in the past 2 years.

The average salary meanwhile, ticked up to $68,000 from $65,000, for an increase of roughly 5% from last year’s report.

As usual, the average salary is higher than the median salary. This is because the smaller number of engineers who earn more than the median can sometimes earn a lot more than the median.

For instance, the top 10% of earners in the field commanded average salaries near $125,000, up about 3.5% from $121,000, while the bottom 10% earned just shy of $26,000 annually, up about 6% from about $24,500 last year.

(Chances are if zoomed in further to the top 5%, 1% or 0.01%, they would command increasingly higher average salaries still. Meanwhile if you zoom in at the bottom 5%, 1% and 0.1% of earners, you would find them increasingly stacking up around the same minimally acceptable salary. This kind of thing is tendency of nature called a “Pareto Distribution” and it is common in all fields of human productivity.)

When we first crunched these numbers in 2012, the highest incomes in the industry were in the category of “Motion Picture & Video”. By the time of our 2015 report, audio engineers in the “Software Publishing” sector had beaten them out by a hair. In 2016 and 2017 however, the Motion Picture & Video category had retaken the lead once again at $88,000.

This year, audio engineers in “Software Publishing” regained the top spot once more with an average salary of about $94,500—up a whopping 9% from last year.  “Motion Picture & Video” salaries also increased, to around $92,000, up about 4.5% since last year.

There are still a lot more audio engineers working in film & video than in software, but the gap has been narrowing. The ratio was roughly 100:1 in our 2015 report, but had gotten down to about 35:1 in last year’s report.

This year things have shifted slightly, due in part to reclassification. The ratio of video to software engineers actually ticked up to 48:1. Why? Likely because of a new category has been siphoning workers out of the Software Publishing classification: “Computer Systems Design and Related Services”. Once you factor in audio workers from this category,  the ratio of engineers in video compared to software sinks down to 16:1, down from 18:1 last year.

This new category of “Computer Systems Design and Related Services” just entered into the statistics two years ago. When it made its first appearance, audio engineers in this small field there were making the beaucoup bucks with average salaries of around $100,000, putting them in the #1 slot.

In last year’s report, the average salaries in “Computer Systems Design” had fallen by about 2%, but they still got to keep the #1 slot. This year, its average salary has shrunk once again as more workers entered into this new category, and their average now sits at $89,000, putting this category in the #3 slot for pay—just behind “Software Publishing” and “Motion Picture & Video”.

The “Radio and Television Broadcasting” category has been experiencing declines as new media continues to overtake the old, and saw some of the lower salaries in the field once again, this time at around $59,000. Still, they accounted for their third highest number of jobs, right after “Motion Picture & Video” and “Sound Recording Industries”.

What about music though?

What most people tend to ask about of course, are audio jobs in the music field. So let’s get right to it!

Audio engineers who were identified as working in the “Sound Recording Industries” earned around $58,000, up significantly since last year, for a gain of about 9.5% from $53,000 in the last report.

Although this is also one of the lower-paying categories in audio overall, it is also one of the largest sectors for salaried employment in audio, ranking in at #2, just below the substantially higher-paying Motion Picture and Video field.

The much smaller number of sound technicians whose employers identified them as “Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers” earned an average of just $49,000 in this report. This number is down a whopping 15% since last year’s report, when it was $58,000.

Salaries here have actually been on a downward trajectory for the past few years, dropping from $60,000 two years ago and $62,000 the year before that, for a total loss of nearly 20% over 4 years.

Does this dropping salary have more to do with negative factors, like piracy, low royalties from streaming services, and reduced sales compared to streams? Or does it have more to do with positive factors, like higher-earning artists and writers moving to freelance or self-employed positions for tax advantages and other reasons, thereby removing themselves from the OES’ rolls of “salaried” employees? It is impossible to say from this data alone.

Just how reliable are these numbers?

If you are somewhat puzzled as to how each category is defined, don’t worry—you are not alone! Many of these categories’ definitions are about as clear and transparent as the tax code.

At this point, it’s worth reiterating that we’ve been looking at the data on salaried employees. Because it is based on mandatory employer reports, it is the most detailed, exacting, and up-to-date data set available.

The more casual and sporadic “CPS” data is based on phone surveys and works to include freelancers and the self-employed puts the median salary of the field a bit lower, at around $42,500 rather than $56,000.

While this may seem like a significant difference at first, it’s worth noting that:

1 ) Freelancers may work fewer hours in total each year, have other sources of income, have more deductions available to lower their reported income, and they may even filter much of their income through LLCs or personal corporate entities for tax purposes.

2 ) The CPS survey likely suffers from greater reporting errors, a self-selection bias toward the least busy workers, and a greater likelihood for respondents to think in terms of net rather than gross pay.

3 ) This “CPS” data is older than the “OES” data we’ve been looking at so far.

(Not to mention, “4”: The likely greater propensity to round down one’s annual income when talking to someone representing the Federal government.)

As always, a word of caution here: Although all these salaries look reasonable on paper, it’s worth mentioning that an “average” is neither a minimum nor a guarantee. It’s not a limit either.

It is always worth remembering that these averages won’t ever factor in the wages of aspiring professionals, which may often be $0, or “too-little-to-report.” And they may not suitably factor in the real possibilities for the small minority of workers who end up making tremendous incomes in any given year.

Where are the jobs, by region?

So far, the numbers we’ve been looking at have been based on national averages. But the conditions in local markets can vary significantly.

Once again, New York and California alone were home to nearly 49% of all of the audio jobs on the books at the BLS, making that a natural place to start looking.

There have been some big changes between the number of jobs in these two states recently. In just 3 years, from 2011 to 2014, the ratio of sound technician jobs in California vs New York went from about 1:1, to nearly 2:1!

This is a dramatic shift. In just a few years, we went from parity between these two regions to roughly twice as many audio jobs in California as New York. By last year, the ratio had reached 2.4:1. This year, the trend continued with California sporting about 2.6 audio engineers for every 1 in New York.

After these two behemoths come Florida, Texas and New Jersey, which were each home to about 3% to 5% of all salaried audio jobs each, with Florida in the lead.

Florida had once been in an even better position. Back in our 2012 report, the state was home to about 15% of the salaried positions in the sector, though now it is down to just under 5%. It seems reasonable to imagine that this may be due to a shift toward freelance work in the amusement park sector, though further automation there may also play a significant role.

Georgia and Tennessee had been holding fairly steady at around 3.5% of the total jobs each in recent years, but this year they dropped to just below 3% of the total salaried positions each.

Behind these states were Illinois, Virginia, Massachusetts, Washington, Utah and Louisiana in the 1%-2% range each.

Where are the jobs by city?

We can get even more granular than this and look not just at states, but at individual cities.

By this measure, Atlanta, Nashville, Seattle, Chicago and Salt Lake City all make it into the top 10 for the number of audio jobs—although at a much smaller scale than New York City or L.A. and its surrounding areas.

We can also look at cities by the concentration of audio jobs, meaning: How many audio engineers are there compared to the general population?

By this measure, Los Angeles was #1 again, followed by the very small market of San Rafael, CA at #2, Nashville in at #3, Salt Lake City rocketing up the charts to #4, followed by San Francisco at #5.

New York City dropped out of the top 3 slots for the proportion of audio engineers, where it had been for years. It now sits at #8. In terms of concentration, NYC is now just below smaller markets like Elgin, Illinois at #6, Bridgeport/Stamford/Norwalk, CT at #7 and just above markets like Charleston, SC at #9 and Portland, ME at #10.

This may have something to do with an exodus of salaried audio engineers out of New York City relative to other markets, but it may also have a lot to do with a few engineering-intensive businesses opening up in more lightly populated cities, bringing them up the charts by comparison.

How much do they pay, by city?

The first time we evaluated these numbers, back in 2012, sound engineers in Los Angeles reported the highest average salaries in the nation.

By our 2015 report however, the average salaries for L.A. sound engineers actually decreased from $83,000 down to $67,000, for a loss of -7% in 3 years, taking them from the #1 slot down to #3.

Meanwhile, in New York City, the average income for audio engineers actually went up during the same period, from $66,000 to $73,000 for an 11% increase, edging out L.A. for the #2 slot in 2015.

This means that the big increase in L.A. audio jobs was accompanied by a significant drop in average salaries, while NYC saw salary increases as its relative population of engineers declined.

This may seem counter-intuitive at first, but it makes economic sense. One would assume that the lowest-paid NYC engineers would be the most likely to leave and seek their fortunes elsewhere, helping to increase the average for those who remained.

Meanwhile, a huge influx of green engineers into L.A. would likely increase the proportion of lower-paid engineers to higher-paid ones, and perhaps even reduce the market price of audio engineers there toward a new, lower equilibrium.

In recent years however, salaries have begun to level out once again between the two biggest audio cities. New York City engineer salaries increased in our 2016 and 2017 reports, to about $78,500, while L.A. salaries increased even more, to $79,000. This year, NYC salaries increased only slightly, to $79,000, while L.A. salaried increased much faster, to $83,000. This put L.A. in the #2 slot for average salaries, with NYC down to slot #4.

(It’s worth noting here that the cost of living is about 20% lower in L.A. than in NYC, meaning that direct comparisons of income may not be totally relevant. An engineer earning $83,000 in L.A. may have a significantly higher standard of living than an engineer making $79,000 in New York. Depending of course, on their own values and preferences.)

Also high on the list for average salaries were the relatively small number of engineers who work in a few surprising markets:

Seattle was once again in the #1 slot with average salaries of nearly $84,000. This is likely driven by increased demand in the tech sector. It displaced San Francisco in the top slot the prior year.

Once again, engineers around Bridgeport, Stamford and Norwalk in Connecticut made it to the top 10, clocking in at #3 this time and earning around $74,000, knocking NYC out of the top 3. Audio engineers from the Silver Spring/Frederick/Rockville area of Maryland made a showing again, rising to #8 at $72,500, up from the #10 and $67,000 last year.

Two new entrants, the Warren/Troy/Farmington Hills area of Michigan, and Camden, New Jersey entered the list at #6 and #7 respectively, with average salaries around $75,000 and $72,500. They helped cause Kansas City and San Diego to drop out of the top 10 this past year.

Included in the top ten once again were three other California cities: San Rafel (rocketing up to the #5 slot at $78,500), as well as San Francisco and Anaheim, which dropped to slots #9 and #10 respectively.

San Francisco and Anaheim saw not just slower growth, but actual drops in average salary, from $75,000 down to $69,500 for San Fran and $76,500 down to $68,500 in the case of Anaheim.

Is this because of higher-paid engineers relocating from these areas to other ones like San Rafael, Seattle or Salt Lake City and skewing the data? Or is there something else going on in those markets causing drop in the number of available jobs? It’s impossible to say from this data alone.

Salaries are generally lower across the largest southern markets, but are back on an upward trend again. After falling nearly 11% in last year’s report, Nashville’s average salary rebounded to about $56,500, erasing much of the loss from the prior year. Atlanta, GA rebounded even more significantly, with an average salary of $56,00, up tremendously, for more than a 30% increase since just last year.

Because the costs of living are far lower in these areas, conditions may be comparable to—or even better than—the big cities, from a quality-of-life standpoint. It wouldn’t be surprising if the bottom 50% of earners in Southern markets had far more room to stretch out in their homes than the top 50% of earners in New York, for instance!

It’s also interesting to note that the data changes slightly when we look at states rather than cities. Although New Orleans did not make it into the top 10 list for salaries by city, interestingly enough, Louisiana as a state had the highest audio salaries in the nation at about $90,500. It only accounted for about 1.8% of the total number of audio jobs however.

How much training do I need?

Do you need a degree or special training for these jobs? We can get some estimates about the education levels required for audio work from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET), a joint project from the US Department of Labor and the Employment & Training Administration (USDOL/ETA).

According to their data, 31% of these jobs required at least a high school diploma, 25% required a post-secondary certificate from a vocational school, and 22% required at least an associates degree.

Presumably, the remaining 22% either required a bachelor’s or higher degree…or required no training at all. Unfortunately, that distinction was not made by O*NET. Fortunately, I have some of my own data that suggests it is overwhelmingly the latter.

Because I am a nerd, I did my own research when I was the chair of the audio program at the largest audio school in New York City in 2014 and 2015. When I surveyed employers there to slake my own curiosity, I found that 22% of them expressed no minimum education preference at all.

43% of the employers who responded to my surveys preferred at least a post-secondary certificate from a vocational school, while 21% preferred at least an associate’s degree. Just 14% preferred a bachelor’s degree as a minimum credential.

While 64% percent of employers in the field said that an associate’s degree credential offered applicants “an advantage” in hiring, only 14% considered any kind of degree “a necessity”.

None of the employers who responded to my survey expressed any preference or requirement for applicants to have a master’s degree or higher.

Live Events (Live Sound, Corporate A/V, DJ): 61%
Music Production (Recording Engineer, Freelance/Self Employed, Record Label): 18%
Sound for Multimedia/Sound for Picture (Post-Production, Audio Books, Broadcast): 15%
Other (Pro Audio Sales, Education): 7%

Tellingly, the proportion of employment in the “live sound” category increased by almost 50% over a 3 year period, while employment in the “music production” category dropped by nearly 50%. Employment rates in “mulitmedia/sound for picture” and “other” stayed fairly constant as a percentage of our job placements.

Over this same period, there was an increase in both the total number of graduates, and the percentage of graduates who quickly found relevant jobs. However, it’s worth noting that because the total number of graduating students increased, so did the total number of students who couldn’t find jobs—even as their percentage decreased as a portion of the whole!

There’s a lot of nuance in the numbers when you dig deep. As always, no one isolated statistic can tell the whole story. We need logic and sound reasoning to craft realistic narratives that truly make sense of the numbers.

What’s next?

Trying to predict the future too precisely is a fool’s errand. A trend will often continue unabated, until at some point it can no longer go on. At that point, a long running trend can quickly reverse. Because of this, it’s always wise to approach employment projections with some skepticism and critical reasoning.

I also like to try and remember that many of these numbers come from the US government. Though a well-meaning and well-educated bunch I’m sure, they are also working within the same kind of institutional framework that brings you the Post Office, the DMV, the VA, the FCC and the Federal Reserve— none of which are widely renowned for their foresight or infallibility.

What we can say with some degree of certainty is what has happened recently, and what is happening right now. We can also make some reasonable guesses about what trends are likely to continue for some time (barring any major shocks). Here are a few things that I’m reasonably sure of today:

1. The world is now full of more video than ever before. That means it’s also full of more audio than ever before. As companies continue to figure out more ways to monetize streaming web video, we can expect more jobs to continue emerge in this field.

2. Recorded music revenues—after taking a decade-long beating—are finally on something of an upward trend again. This is thanks to both the monetization of streaming audio services and crackdowns on unethical pirate websites. As “paying for music” begins to become not only the most ethical, but the most convenient option once again, we should expect income increases in the music sector, and the regaining of some lost ground.

3. Live events—both in music and in the corporate sector—are attracting more revenue than ever before. In the age of a non-stop stream of digital entertainment and information, people seem to be refreshingly willing to pay more for real-life experiences once again. That’s good, because evidence suggests that experiences make us happier than things.

4. Video games continue to bring in more dollars than movies and recorded music combined. The number of audio professionals employed here is small at the moment, but swiftly growing. Of course, more money often attracts more competition. Look for this field, and the number of jobs in it, to continue to grow in the future.

5. As long as there is audio, there will be jobs in audio. Sometimes more and sometimes less. But this much is certain: Short of the collapse of civilization as we know it, audio isn’t going anywhere.

Justin Colletti is a mastering engineer, educator and writer. He edits SonicScoop.

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