Report: Radio Doesn't Pay Well

But You Already Knew That!

Forbes has combed through data gathered annually by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, a division of the Labor Department, to find the 13 most surprising low-paying jobs. The BLS culls its information from surveys it mails to businesses, and it releases its Occupational Employment and Wage Estimates Data each spring. The report shares information about hundreds of occupations, including hourly and annual wages, total numbers of workers in the profession, and the states and metro areas that pay the best.

To make the cut for the Forbes list, the average pay of employees in the profession had to be less than $50,000—when you’d think it would be more.

Among professions that you probably thought paid more than $50,000 a year: Radio and TV announcers, and reporters and correspondents.

Forbes reports “announcers generally speak or read from scripted materials, such as news reports or commercial messages—but their voices and personalities earn them only $40,510 a year, on average. The mean pay is as little as $17,150 for the bottom 10% of them. You’ll make less than $27,740 working as a radio or television announcer in Wyoming, Oklahoma, North Dakota, Alabama and Kentucky—but you’ll earn $84,220, on average, in Washington, D.C.

Pay isn’t much better for reporters and correspondents. Those pros gather news by interview, investigation, or observation and share it with the public. Reporting and writing stories for newspapers, magazines, radio, television or other mediums will put $43,640 in your wallet each year, or just $20,000 for the bottom 10%.

Reporters in D.C. and Massachusetts earn an average annual income of $71,450 and $64,080, respectively—while those in places like Montana, Iowa and Idaho earn an average yearly pay of less than $29,500.

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