Tennessee / Correction / Correctional Officer 1*
Job-title file
Correctional Officer 1*
Supervise and maintain custody of incarcerated individuals, enforce facility rules, and keep the facility secure.
359 employees hold this title in Correction. Median total compensation for the role is $51,204, below the department median of $65,044.
- Employees
- 359
- Total payroll
- $18.7M
- Role median
- $51,204
- Agency median
- $65,044
- Comparison
- Below
What the records show
Role pay distribution
Pay distribution for this role
How total compensation varies among the 359 people in this role. Even for one job title, pay differs with seniority, step, overtime, and tenure. Each bar is a pay range; the far-right bar collects the highest earners.
Compared with the local labor market
Correctional Officer 1* pay vs. Tennessee
Across all employers in Tennessee, the median wage for Correctional Officers and Jailers — about 6,990 people — is $50,940. Correction pays a median base salary of $62,988 for this role, 24% above that figure — above the 90th percentile of local pay for the occupation.
Where Correction sits in the local pay range
The bar is the range of annual wages for Correctional Officers and Jailers across every employer in Tennessee, from the 10th to the 90th percentile, with the middle 50% highlighted. The marker shows Correction’s median base salary for this role. Both figures are base pay only.
And across the country
Nationwide, the median wage for Correctional Officers and Jailers — about 380,500 people — is $58,940. Correction’s median base salary is 7% above that national figure, about the 56th percentile of pay for the occupation nationally.
Local and national wages differ for reasons beyond how well a job pays — cost of living, the mix of employers, and local demand for the occupation all move the Tennessee range relative to the national one.
Computed over the 2,030 of 2,032 people in this role paid at least $25,000in base salary. The rest are part-year or part-time records, whose actual pay isn’t comparable to a full-time annual wage.
Median total compensation for this role at Correction is $64,050, which includes overtime and employer-paid benefits. The benchmark above excludes both, so total compensation is deliberately not compared against it.
Benchmark: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (May 2025). BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) covers all employers in the area — private, non-profit, and government alike — so this is a comparison against the whole local labor market for the occupation, not against private-sector pay. OEWS wages are straight-time pay and exclude overtime, shift differentials, and employer-paid benefits, so the government figure shown here is base pay on the same basis. Total compensation is not comparable to it. Job titles are matched to the closest standard occupation, so the comparison is between similar work rather than an identical job classification.
Compare jurisdictions
Correctional Officer beyond Tennessee
This role is reported in 16 jurisdictions. In Tennessee, the median of $64,050 ranks #6 of 16. See Correctional Officer across all of Tennessee →
Highest-paying jurisdictions for this role
Median total compensation for comparable Correctional Officerroles in other jurisdictions. Titles are matched by normalized name across sources, not identical job classification, and pay is not cost-of-living adjusted. Each bar links to that jurisdiction’s page for the role.
Record list
Employees with this title
Page 1
No employees match these filters.