Industry Intel: 2019 Audio Engineer Salary & Jobs Report

It’s that time of year again. Read our new 2019 audio jobs report!

This year, we’re diving into the data once again to give you a sense for the incomes that audio engineers are earning, and where their best prospects for employment lie.

There are some new and very interesting trends in the data this time, and if you want the cliff notes version, here it is, right up front:

The audio field continues to be increasingly dominated by freelance and independent contractor work, rather than by traditional salaried employment. No big surprise there.

But a new emerging trend is that—for the first time this decade—audio engineers appear to be leaving Los Angeles and other California cities for more affordable locales.

This mirrors a larger national trend throughout the economy, wherein workers have been steadily migrating out of high-cost, high-tax states and into low-cost, low-tax states.

It’s like an echo of a trend we noticed earlier in this decade, when audio workers migrated in droves from NYC to what were then considerably lower cost cities in California. Now it appears that a notable portion are moving on from California to yet more affordable locales once again.

This has had the side effect of actually reducing salaries for audio engineers on the national level—but that’s not necessarily cause for despair. As workers move from expensive areas to considerably more affordable ones, their quality of life and purchasing power can actually improve, even if it is at a new lower dollar figure.

Despite this new migration out of higher-cost areas, the lion’s share of audio employment remains in New York and California, which were home to about 45% of all the salaried audio jobs in the country put together. This however, is a relative decline of 10% from their 50% share of the job market just last year.

Below, we’ll go into all the juicy details, but first a note on how this data is compiled.

Where does this data come from?

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 come from their Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) survey, a questionnaire for businesses about the workers they employ.

The one big drawback of this survey is that it only tracks employees, and not independent contractors, so it leaves out more jobs than it includes. Still, this data goes very deep and can help give us a good sense for the overall trends.

As always, we’ll supplement this report with numbers from the Current Population Survey (CPS). Although it is done less frequently and at a much smaller scale, the CPS tracks the responses of individual workers, helping to account for freelancers and the self-employed.

Let’s dive in and see what these studies say about where we are and where we’re headed.

How many jobs are there?

If you’ve read our past reports, you may remember that the first time we explored these numbers, we found that despite all the stories of major studio closings, the number of jobs for “sound engineering technicians” actually increased by nearly 50% during the first decade of the 21st century.

The most recent projections from the BLS going forward 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.

Of course, 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 for as the total number of jobs in the field, the OES survey of employers counts 13,500 salaried “sound engineering technicians” in the entire country. This is actually down just slightly since last year, and down nearly 10% from its peak two years ago. But this OES data only tells a very small part of the story.

The most recent estimate from the CPS—which does include freelancers—puts the number of people working in audio at 134,000 nationwide. Although this is the same as last year, it is up 15% from two years ago.

This data isn’t perfect, but it suggests that the total number of jobs may be stable—or even growing—as salaried work continues to give way to independent contractor jobs.

This huge disparity in job numbers also suggests a ratio of about 10 freelancers for every 1 salaried “sound engineering technician”. Clearly, salaried employment in the field is the exception, not the rule.

How much do these jobs pay?

This year, the OES estimate for the median salary of audio engineers has actually fallen just slightly, to $52,400. This is down about 6.5% since last year and down 2.5% since two years ago.

This is the first time we’ve seen such a significant drop in earnings for audio engineers since we started studying this data in 2012. Until just now, median salaries in this field have generally been on the rise.

Even with this recent decline, there has still been a massive pay increase of more than 75% since the beginning of the millennium, when audio salaries were only about $30,000. This easily beats out the official consumer price inflation estimate of 50% over the same period.

(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.)

In addition to the median salary dropping this year, the average salary also fell, from $68,000 to $65,000. This is a decrease of roughly 5% from its peak last year, and is about flat compared to two years ago.

As usual, the average salary is higher than the median salary because the engineers who earn more than the median can earn a lot more than the median. However, it’s at this top end of the spectrum where the lion’s share of the reported salary declines occurred this year.

The top 10% of earners in the field commanded average salaries near $117,600 (down about 6% from $125,000 last year), while the bottom 10% earned about $26,000—roughly flat since last year. But all this only tells a small part of the story.

Why the decline?

So what gives? Why the drop in salaries this year? Are these the cracks in the foundation of what has supposedly been “the greatest economy ever”? Maybe. But there are at least three alternate explanations that are each supported by some good evidence:

1) Some of this decline is a statistical artifact due to higher-paid employees leaving salaried positions for independent contractor work in order to maintain tax advantages under the new U.S. tax rules. This would cause them to disappear from the OES salary estimates completely.

2) There is a potential problem with the data from California this year, which could be artificially lowering the national salary estimates.

3) Salaries are actually increasing in smaller and less expensive cities and states while they decline in the largest and most expensive cities and states. This leads to lower national salary numbers, though potentially, with a better quality of life and even more purchasing power.

Let’s explore each of these three factors more deeply, and look at a few more numbers while we’re at it.

Reason #1: Employee salaries are down, but freelance salaries are up

When we shift our focus to instead look at the phone survey data from the CPS—which include responses from freelancers and the self-employed—we start to see a very different picture.

The salary estimates here jumped to $52,500, up more than 23% from last year! That’s a huge increase. It suggests that some higher income earners may be moving to freelance employment, which is newly incentivized under the latest tax rules in the U.S.

This is also significant because the studies that include freelancer income usually put the salary estimate about 20% lower than the studies that include only regular employees. This makes sense for a few reasons:

Freelancers may work fewer hours in total each year. They may not work in the field as their only source of income. And, they may have more deductions available to lower their reported income.

Additionally, the phone surveys used by the CPS are likely to suffer from greater reporting errors, as well as a bias toward sampling from the least busy workers, who have the most time to spend answering long questionnaires over the phone.

As we’ll see shortly, there is another silver lining here as well: Although employee salaries could be dropping in more expensive areas like Los Angeles and Seattle, salaries appear to be rising in relatively inexpensive ones like Atlanta, Portland and Dallas.

Reason #2: Bad data from California?

Yet another reason for the decline in the CPS salary estimates could be a problem with the data itself. For the first time since we’ve been crunching these numbers, the state of California has failed to release its estimates for sound technicians’ wages.

This is a serious complicating factor because CA is home to the largest number of salaried audio engineers in the country, and their incomes have tended to be among the highest in the country.

Because I am a nerd, I called the Bureau of Labor Statistics to ask why there were no salary estimates from California this year. They told me that the two most likely reasons are issues with the quality of the data, or issues of confidentiality for the companies that participate in these surveys.

Apparently, if a big jump in the data could suggest significant changes that might be traced to specific companies, then that data is not to be shared publicly. Unfortunately, the BLS was unable to tell me whether quality or confidentiality was the issue, because their doing so would be a breach of confidentiality itself!

If there was a problem with the quality of the data this year, then salary estimates from California would not have been included in the national estimates. This would almost certainly have the effect of artificially bringing down the average salary estimates across the board, as California audio salaries tend to be among the highest in the country.

If the data was withheld for issues of confidentiality however, then the numbers from California would be factored into the national data. This is also a plausible, especially because data for the number of California audio jobs is available, and shows that they dropped this year by almost 7%.

In Los Angeles, the audio job losses were even more significant—closer to 10% declines. San Francisco, San Diego and Anaheim all dropped out of the top 10 cities for number of jobs.

We also have a one date point to suggest that California salaries are down as well. An estimate was released for San Diego this year, showing that salaries there dropped from $68,510 to $62,990, a salary decline of more than 8% in a single California city.

This is very unusual for California compared to recent years. Is it a major blip or an emerging new trend? Fortunately, job increases in other areas made up for the job losses in California, keeping the national job number flat this year.

With all this said, because this particular data is drawn from a study that only counts salaried employees, a lower number of jobs or even incomes in California could mean transitions from salaried employment to independent contractor work—at least in part. So it’s impossible to say for certain that total audio income or work is down in California.  But we do have a few data points suggesting that it might be. And we certainly have some data showing that at least, jobs and salaries are up much more in other, less expensive areas by comparison.

As always, the official numbers will raise nearly as many questions as they answer. They can only tell a very broad and somewhat imprecise story. But it’s still one worth hearing. Let’s listen a little more.

Reason #3: Employment is shifting to less expensive markets

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 were home to the most jobs in this field. But their share of the market appears to have declined, dropping almost 10% from about 50% of the audio job market down to 45%.

There had already been some big changes in this area in the recent past. Between 2011 and 2014, the ratio of sound technician jobs in California vs New York went from about 1:1 to nearly 2:1 as workers left NYC in droves for less expensive cities in California.

This trend continued all the way up until last year when California peaked at about 2.6 audio engineers for every 1 in New York. This year, that ratio has ticked down just slightly to 2.5 to 1. Both states lost salaried jobs this year, but California lost more. Its jobs were down 7%, compared to just 3% in NY.

Although this could be because of economic issues or because of workers moving to independent contract work, there is a third and potentially more powerful reason that is being seen throughout the country: The continued migration of workers from high-tax, high-cost states to low-cost, low-tax states.

This was actually a factor in so many audio engineers moving from NYC to L.A. to begin with. At the time, the cost of living in L.A. could be 20% lower than in NYC. Now, as more and more creative workers get priced out of LA, they could be migrating to more affordable locales once more.

There’s good evidence for this as well. In general, California has often seen the highest migration out of the state than any other in recent years. And at the same time that California has seen job losses, the number of audio jobs has increased substantially in some much smaller markets.

In terms of the sheer number of jobs, after the behemoths of New York and California came Florida, Texas, and Georgia. (The last of which knocked New Jersey out of the #5 slot this year.)

All three of these states grew both their gross number of jobs, and their share of their share of employment in the field. They are now home to about 4% to 7% of all salaried audio jobs each, with Florida in the lead.

Unlike New York and California, the number of audio jobs in each of these states is up substantially. Audio jobs in Florida grew by a whopping 40%. In Texas, the job count grew by 30%. The job count in Georgia also grew by 30%, and in the Atlanta area alone, it was up by 37%.

Behind these states were New Jersey, Oregon, Tennessee, Illinois, Virginia, Nevada, Massachusetts, Washington, Utah, and Louisiana. They all now have in the range of 1.5% to 4% of the market each. And unlike NY and CA, every one of these states saw either fairly stable job levels, and in some cases—like Oregon—very significant growth.

At least one other very expensive area also fared poorly in this year’s report. Notably, jobs for audio engineers in Washington state—and the Seattle area in particular—appear to have dropped substantially. Salaries in Washington state declined from #1 in the country to #5, as their official job count fell by 36%.

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, Portland, Washington DC, Nashville, Las Vegas, Dallas, and Salt Lake City and Chicago 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.

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, the unlikely city of Medford, Oregon jumped up to the #1 slot. It was followed by Los Angeles, Salt Lake City, Nashville, Portland, Las Vegas, New Orleans, NYC, Atlanta, and Austin.

Studying these numbers year after year, it’s interesting to see that New York City has fallen so far from the top slot for concentration of audio engineers. The same now appears to have happened for all California cities other than Los Angeles. As of this year, San Francisco, San Diego and Anaheim have all dropped out of the top 10 by this measure, along with Seattle, Washington.

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. But as engineers left NYC for LA, average salaries for L.A. sound engineers actually decreased from $83,000 down to $67,000. Interestingly, New York City audio engineer salaries went up during the same period, from $66,000 to $73,000.

This may be 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 salaries for the more established audio engineers who remained in the city.

Meanwhile, a huge influx of green audio 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 more recent years, salaries have began to level out once again between these two biggest audio cities. By 2017, the two cities were neck and neck at around $79,000 each. Last year, L.A was #2 at $83,000 while NYC held flat around $79,000 for the #4 slot, with Seattle beating them both out for the #1 slot at $84,000.

This year, California did not report its estimates, and Seattle saw its salaries decline to the point where it dropped out of the top ten entirely—falling all the way down from the #1 slot in a single year. This left New York City in the #1 slot this year for the highest salaries in the nation for audio engineers, even though salaries there held basically flat since last year at $79,490.

Also high on the list for average salaries were the relatively small number of engineers who work in a few surprising markets. Unlikely Detroit, Michigan found itself in the #2 slot with median salaries of $69,730, though with a small number of jobs. Houston and Dallas wound up in the #3 and #4 slots at $66,280 and $65,530 respectively.

Audio incomes in the southern markets are back on an upward trend again. Salaries in Atlanta, GA increased 30% for last year’s report, and they are up 10% again this year to $61,790. Nashville, which saw declines two years ago, bounced back last year, and is now holding steady at $56,570.

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.

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, Louisiana as a state had the highest audio salaries in the nation at about $88,610. (This is down just slightly—about 2%—from last year.) Connecticut was in a similar boat. Though no single Connecticut city cracked the top 10 this year, the state as a whole was in the #2 slot for audio income at $87,420.

Salaries by sector

Since we first started crunching these numbers in 2010, the highest salaries have gone either to engineers in the “Motion Picture & Video” sector, or to audio engineers in one of the computing sectors like “Software Publishing” or “Computer Systems Design”.

For this 2019 report, we found that numbers in all these high end sectors had dropped across the board. Salaries in Motion Picture and Film regained the top slot, even as they dropped to $80,000, which is down a whopping 13% from last year, and the lowest number we’ve seen since we began studying this data in 2012.

Salaries in computer related fields were down even further. Software Publishing salaries, often in 1st or 2nd place, disappeared from the top 5 completely. Meanwhile, Computer Systems Design salaries dropped 28% from their debut high water mark 3 years ago, descending to the #5 slot at $72,000.

The remaining slots in the top 5 were for audio engineers in “Specialized Design Services”, “Other Information Services” and “Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping and Payroll Services”, who earned a median salary between $73,000 and $76,000.

The “Radio and Television Broadcasting” category has been experiencing salary and employment declines as new media continues to overtake the old. But this year they stood out as their salaries actually increased roughly 8.5% from just under $59,000 to just shy of $64,000. This occurred even though the total number of jobs in this sector dropped 10%.

How did salaries increase at the same time that the number of jobs dropped in this part of the field? It could be that the lowest-paid, newer employees are the ones dropping out of the field, leaving the higher paid, longer-term veterans to drive up the average.

What most people tend to ask about though, are audio jobs in music. So let’s get to it! Audio engineers who were identified as working in the “Sound Recording Industries” earned an average of $56,680, down just slightly from the $57,900 reported last year—though still up substantially from the $53,000 number reported two years ago.

Although music is one of the lower-paying categories in audio, it is also one of the largest sectors for salaried employment in audio, ranking in at #2 in total employment rate, just behind the higher-paying Motion Picture and Video field.

The much smaller number of sound technicians whose employers identified them as “Independent Artists, Writers, and Performers” ticked down to $48,000, a drop of 2% from $49,000 last year, and down a whopping 17% since two years ago, when it was $58,000.

Salaries have actually been on a downward trajectory in this “Independent Artists” category for the past few years, dropping nearly 22% since our 2015 report when it was $62,000.

Does the continuously dropping salary in this field have more to do with negative factors, like piracy and lower royalties from streaming services than from sales? 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? Sadly, it is impossible to say from this data alone.

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 “multimedia/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. Audio engineers, much like millennials, creative workers more broadly, and heck, people in general, are starting to move from the largest and most expensive markets to smaller and more attractive ones. This kind of things seems to happen at least once a generation. I’m living proof of it myself, having recently moved from Brooklyn to a smaller city in New Hampshire for the quality of life and to start a family. The data shows that I’m not alone. And it’s not only in this field.

2. 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.

3. 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.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

Please note: When you buy products through links on this page, we may earn an affiliate commission.