Common Questions: How Much Does A Wildland Firefighter Make In A Season?

I get lots of questions about salary and what to expect money wise in a fire season so here’s info about base pay and hours, overtime and hazard pay.

Making that money by earning hazard pay and overtime in the smoke during a burn out

UPDATED 8/12/22

Income can vary wildly in a season because it depends on so many factors. Wildland firefighters work a base 40 hour work week. Your hourly rate depends on the GS level that you are hired at. Base pay is covered here in this chart (click on a GS level to get an hourly rate). Most people start as a GS-03 or 4 depending on how much school you have or if you were in the military. If you click on each GS level it will tell you the hourly rate ranges. Current hourly wage for a GS-04 is $15.47 an hour.

The government passed legislature in 2021 so that all wildland firefighters would make a minimum of $15 an hour and included a retention bonus based on GS level each pay period starting in July 2022. It’s hard to tell exactly how much more we will get since that wasn’t that long ago. For the most up to date info on wildland fire pay and all the changes happening within the government check out Grassroots Wildland Firefighters website. It explains everything in great detail and they are working super hard to get us increased pay, benefits, and better work life balance.

Depending on your duty station (where you report for work) you may have an increased “locality pay adjustment” based on the cost of living in that area. The map will show you if you do. One last note: you will be a step one, you only get step increases when you are a GS level for multiple seasons, but step increases and GS increases are a whole other blog post.

When we work overtime we get paid the hourly base pay times 1.5. If we are on a fire where we are working on uncontrolled fireline (which is most of the time) you get an additional hazard pay that is 25% of your base pay. For math purposes if you are making a base wage of $15 an hour it adds up much more quickly when you are working overtime at $22.50 an hour plus hazard pay of $3.75 for every hour worked that day.

For example: we work 16 hour days on fires most of the time. For a $15 an hour base pay rate that adds up to $120 base (8 hours X $15) + $180 in overtime (8 hours x $22.50) + $60 in hazard pay (16 hours x $3.75) for a total of $360 a day before taxes.

Most firefighters count a good fire season as one where they are getting 700 total hours of overtime. I've had years where I only had 450 and years I've had 850. Hotshot crews generally count a good season as one where they break 1000 hours, but I had friends this past fire season who had 1300+ which is A LOT. So you can see how the monthly and season totals can be really different for all firefighters. A good estimate is that you can make $30,000- $50,000 in a 6ish month fire season depending on what type of crew you are on and how much overtime and time on the fireline time you get.

I hope this gives you a better idea of what wildland firefighters make in a season. Good luck and comment if you have any more questions.