Pay Scale

• Sheriff's patrol officers brought home an average annual salary of $55,620 per year in 2010, the Occupational Employment Statistics provided by the Bureau of Labor Statistics show. The bureau reports that pay for these deputies generally ranged from $31,700 to $83,510 per year, with a reported median salary of $53,540. Those in the middle half of the pay scale made between $53,540 and $69,070 annually.
  
  

Employers

• Sheriff's deputies generally work for local government agencies. According to the BLS, officers working for local government earned an average of $55,710 yearly, or just above the national average salary earned by all sheriff's patrol and other police officers nationwide. Salaries for police officers, in general, vary little when compared across the different types of employing agencies. For instance, state officers made $58,200, on average, while federal officers made less at $51,590.
  
  

Location

• Location is one of the more important factors in determining what a sheriff's deputy will typically be paid. According the BLS, officers working in urban areas generally make more than those in rural areas. Some cities pay more than other,s also. For example, the highest-paid patrol officers in the nation worked in the San Jose and Oakland, California, metro areas and made average salaries of $96,330 and $86,660 per year, respectively. In fact, California law officers were the highest-paid in the nation, compared to all other states, at an average of $77,290 on a statewide basis. Even the highest paying non-metropolitan area for officers to work in was in the Eastern Sierra region of California where officers made an average of $69,550. Los Angeles and Chicago had the highest number of officers who made average salaries of $84,230 and $73,810, respectively.
  
  

Job Outlook

• The number of jobs for sheriff's deputies and other police officers is expected to grow by about 10 percent through 2018. Although this only represents average growth, the sheer size of the nation's police force means that this 10 percent growth will result in nearly 85,000 new jobs for law officers. The rapid growth of the population will continue to require that local departments hire officers to keep the streets safe.