An analysis of payroll records of the NYC firefighters who worked a minimum of 2080 hours in the fiscal year of 2020. A total of 8,000 plus records were parsed and visualized using Excel, Tidyverse, R base, Photoshop, and Illustrator.
Over 44 000 people took the last open competitive FDNY exam #7001. The first challenge for all of them is to score high enough even to be considered for employment with the FDNY. With a class of 320 recruits and an average of two classes per year, roughly only 5,000 - 6,000 applicants will get a chance to continue the hiring process until the next exam. The lucky ones won't have to wait long to start the academy; people lower on the selection list might end waiting four to five years to be called up. The second challenge is to graduate from the FDNY academy. The third challenge is to survive the first year or two as a probationary firefighter on a low compensation package.
All New York City firefighters are split into six distinct group grades based on their experience. Grades six through two represent firefighters whose experience on the job ranges from one to five years. After five years on the job, firefighters get the first-grade firefighter designation and the highest salary bracket. In the fiscal year 2020, all firefighter base salaries fell into six grade pay levels.
Base Salary Number of firefighters
$43,904 303
$46,066 501
$50,173 585
$55,192 809
$60, 837 583
$85,292 5,387
In addition to base salaries, all firefighters are expected to work overtime. The hours are somewhat equal for most year groups except the firefighters completely new on the job. For example, during the first year on the job, a probationary FDNY firefighter worked - on average - 345 overtime hours compared to 575 overtime hours logged by the firefighters in their sixth year on the job. The highest overtime recorded in the fiscal year 2020 was 1,458 hours and that was a firefighter with more than 10 years of experience.
The New York City overtime rate is 1.5 times the regular salary rate. So comparing the overtime hours worked between different year groups doesn't tell us much about what individual firefighters got actually paid. Let's look at the total overtime paid based on an individual firefighter base pay.
Given six separate base salary brackets, overtime compensation varied greatly between new and experienced firefighters. The first-year firefighter earned, on average, $8,000 in the fiscal year 2020. The maximum overtime amount paid in the freshmen class was $20,702. In comparison, the average amount paid to the firefighters in their sixth year of service was $23,930 with the top earners going as high as $58,154. The highest overtime paid among all year groups was $69,981.
Besides the base pay and overtime, the FDNY firefighters can also get an additional compensation for longevity, extra tours of duty, night-shift differentials and performance. The old contract between the Union and New Yok City stipulated that no night shift differential was to be paid to firefighters with less than six months on the job, and for those with less than five years of experience it was going to be reduced by 50%. If nothing has changed between 2010 and 2021, then it could possibly explain the big difference gap.
In summary, your first five years as a firefighter in New York City might be tough financially. Excluding a small group of outliers, an average probationary firefighter in NYC probably won't cross the $80-90K threshold. But if you do make it through the first five years on the job, the rest of your career can be financially very rewarding.