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Overview
Play prerecorded music for live audiences at venues or events such as clubs, parties, or wedding receptions. May use techniques such as mixing, cutting, or sampling to manipulate recordings. May also perform as emcee (master of ceremonies). Radio disc jockeys are included in "Broadcast Announcers and Radio Disc Jockeys" (27-3011).
This career appears to require experience.
Until very recently, government survey data collection for Disc Jockeys included the career Specialized Entertainers, Sports and Related Workers. As a result, much of the information for these careers is identical.
Is this job likely to reward you for sticking with it through pay raises and promotions? The higher a job’s “experience quotient,” the more you are likely to get as you stay there.
Take a minute to look at how much you might expect your salary to increase with each five years' experience, as well as how the numbers working at each age change. Does this seem to be a job for the young or the old, or could it be a career offering steady salary growth for many years?
How do benefits for this career compare to other jobs? The availability of health care, especially employer provided health care, and pension plans can add significantly to the value of compensation you receive in a career. These charts compare how this career compares to other careers with regard to health care and pension plans.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), disc jockeys typically hold no formal educational credential.
Sometimes the typical education identified by the BLS differs a bit from the reality of the how much education current workers actually have. The donut shows the education level held by people currently working as disc jockeys as reported in responses to the American Community Survey.
Programs recommended by the Department of Education
The Department of Education recommends the following college degree programs as preparation for this career. You can click a program row to learn more about the program and explore a list of schools that offer the program.
Some careers tend to be centered in specific parts of the country. For example, most jobs in fashion are in New York or California. Let's see if your dream job is easy to find in your dream location! We have a few choices for viewing the data that can help you get a full employment picture.
Which states hire the most disc jockeys? We wonder if that's a fair question since states come in all sizes, so instead let's start with the question of which states have the highest density of people working as disc jockeys. You can choose to view the number of jobs per state if you prefer.
Salaries by state
Let's get a feel for where disc jockeys earn the highest salaries. There are several choices for which data we consider and how we view that data, and each can lead to different conclusions, so please read on...
Median salary versus state ratio
We use two methods to compare salaries across states:
In-state comparisons: the ratio of median (middle) salaries for disc jockeys compared to the median salary for all people working in each state, or
Median salary: the unaltered median salaries for disc jockeys.
We hope the ratio allows perspective about how salaries may compare to the regional cost-of-living.
The darkest shading corresponds to states in which disc jockeys earn the highest salary when compared to other jobs in the state. We think this figure might be a better indicator than the actual salary for your buying power as a state resident.
Select a state to see local area details
Location-adjusted median salary for Disc Jockeys (ACS)
We’ve found that some jobs have a huge number of part-time workers, and typically that is because they are unable to find full-time work or the job itself can’t provide full-time hours. With 58% part-time workers, this occupation has a higher percentage of part-time workers than 96% of careers.