The pay isn't great in the Carolinas in general. Expect to start in the low to mid $30k for a yearly salary on a 56 hour workweek, which is $11/hr best case scenario. Charleston County EMS in South Carolina pays higher than most other places, around $40k to start IIRC, but where they blow away the 56 hour places (typically 24/48 with no Kelly days, great burnout potential) is that they've recently discontinued their 24 hr shifts, and now do 12's only, for a 42hr workweek, with a cap. of 16 consecutive hours! More EMS organizations need to follow this lead. All things being equal, if a department quotes a yearly salary of $36,608 on a 56 hour workweek, it's $11/hr. Your hourly rate at the same place on a 42 hr schedule is just under $16.50/hr. See the difference? Where it really gets costly is with your OT rates, which is $16.50 for the 56 hour person, and $24.75 for the 42 hour employee! If you only do 24 hrs of OT per month, the 56 hour pay is an extra $4,752, and for 42 hr pay it's an extra $7,128, a difference of $2,376. It gets even more maddening if the 56 hour employee goes back and re-calculates their pay based on the 42 hour pay rate. If the 42 hour employee averages 56 hour/week over then whole year (14 hours OT weekly), their yearly pay is $54,826! (36,608 + 18,108 in OT) This is how you get screwed working a 56 hour workweek. BTW, $36,608 x 1.5 = $54,912, so it can be said that a 42 hour employee working the same amount of hours as a 56 hr employee is making 1.5 the former's salary, same hours worked. The more OT the 42 hour person does, the wider the gap. Few people realize this, and are content with being able to work less days per week. This is how these employers get over on you.
If at all possible, avoid any place that has a 56 hour workweek. I'm fire based, so FLSA laws pay 53 hrs straight time and 3 hrs. OT on the average, so with the same quoted yearly salary, 53 hrs at $12.25/hr + 3 hrs at $18.375 = $36,627. So, if you're fire-based FLSA doing the 56 hour workweek, at least you get an extra $1.25/hr over the EMS only employee getting $11/hr on a 40 straight + 16 OT per week situation.
If Law Enforcement appeals to you, there's the Maryland State Troopers, and Fairfax County Police in VA, who both have LEO medics flying:
http://mdsp.maryland.gov/Careers/Pages/TrooperMedic.aspx
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/police/jobs/police-officer.htm
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/police/helicopter/
http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/hr/pay-plan/fy16/oplan16.pdf
Fairfax Police is putting their people through our medic school along with some of our FF/EMT's, so they are hurting for medics, and they are also hurting for LEO's in general. The FD covers all needed hours for VA and NR recert, so I'm sure that you could maintain your P-card while putting in the required time to be eligible to fly.
I've actually toyed with the idea of moving from FFX Co. FRD to Fairfax County police, and fly on FFX1. Pay cut, but going from 24's to 12's would be a welcome change, and I'm getting very burnt out with ground ambulance txp. We are a "1&1" system, which means we are an all-ALS fleet, so we run mostly BLS and very non-acute patients. I only do real ALS on a patient maybe once a week at best, and I do a lot of OT.
