Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in House Member Offices, 2001-2015
Released: 2016-11-09T00:00:00

Introduction

The level of pay for congressional staff is a source of recurring questions among Members of Congress, congressional staff, and the public. Members of the House of Representatives typically set the terms and conditions of employment for staff in their offices. This includes job titles, duties, and rates of pay, subject to a maximum level, and resources available to them to carry out their official duties. There may be interest in congressional pay data from multiple perspectives, including assessment of the costs of congressional operations; guidance in setting pay levels for staff in Member offices; or comparison of congressional staff pay levels with those of other federal government pay systems.

Publicly available resources do not provide aggregated congressional staff pay data in a readily retrievable form. The most recent staff compensation report was issued in 2010, which, like previous compensation reports, relied on anonymous, self-reported survey data. Pay information in this report is based on the House Statement of Disbursements (SOD), published quarterly by the Chief Administrative Officer, as collated by LegiStorm, a private entity that provides some congressional data by subscription. Data in this report are based on official House reports, which afford the opportunity to use consistently collected data from a single source. Additionally, this report provides annual data, which allows for observations about the nature of House Member staff compensation over time.

This report provides pay data for 12 staff position titles that are typically used in House Members' offices. The positions include the following:

Caseworker Chief of Staff District Director Executive Assistant Field Representative Legislative Assistant Legislative Correspondent Legislative Director Office Manager Press Secretary Scheduler Staff Assistant

House Member staff pay data for the years 2001-2015 were developed based on a random sampling of staff for each position in each year. In order to be included, House staff had to hold a position with the same job title in the Member's office for the entire calendar year. For each year, the SOD reports pay data for five time periods: January 1 and 2; January 3-March 31; April 1-June 30; July 1-September 30; and October 1-December 31. The aggregate pay of those five periods equals the annual pay of a congressional staff member.

For each year, 2001-2015, a random sample of 45 staff for each position, and who did not receive pay from any other congressional employing authority, was taken. Every recorded payment ascribed to those staff for the calendar year is included. Data collected for this report may differ from an employee's stated annual salary due to the inclusion of overtime, bonuses, or other payments in addition to base salary paid in the course of a year. For some positions, it was not possible to identify 45 employees who held that title for the entire year. In circumstances when data for 18 or fewer staff were identified for a position, this report provides no data. Generally, data provided in this report are based on no more than three observations per Member office per year, and only one per office per position each year.

Pay data for staff working in Senators' offices are available in CRS Report R44324, Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in Senators' Offices, FY2001-FY2014 . Data describing the pay of congressional staff working in House and Senate committee offices are available in CRS Report R44322, Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in House Committees, 2001-2014 , and CRS Report R44325, Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in Senate Committees, FY2001-FY2014 , respectively.

Data Concerns

There may be some advantages to relying on official salary expenditure data instead of survey findings, but data presented here are subject to some challenges that could affect the findings or their interpretation. Some of the concerns include the following:

There is a lack of data for first-term Members in the first session of a Congress. Authority to use the Member Representational Allowance (MRA) for the previous year expires January 2, and new MRA authority begins on January 3. As a consequence, no data are available for first-term Members of the House in the first session of a Congress. Pay data provide no insight into the education, work experience, position tenure, full- or part-time status of staff, or other potential explanations for levels of compensation. Data do not differentiate between staff based in Washington, DC, district offices, or both. Member offices that do not utilize any of the 12 job position titles or their variants, or whose pay data were not reported consistently, are excluded. Potential differences could exist in the job duties of positions with the same title. Aggregation of pay by job title rests on the assumption that staff with the same title carry out similar tasks. Given the wide discretion congressional employing authorities have in setting the terms and conditions of employment, there may be differences in the duties of similarly titled staff that could have effects on their levels of pay.

Data Tables and Visualizations

Tables in this section provide background information on House pay practices, comparative data for each position, and detailed pay data and visualizations for each position. Table 1 provides the maximum payable rates for House Member staff since 2001 in both nominal (current) and constant 2016 dollars.

Constant dollar calculations throughout the report are based on the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (CPI-U) for various years, expressed in constant, 2016 dollars.

Table 2 provides the available cumulative percentage changes in pay in constant 2016 dollars for each of the 12 positions, Members of Congress, and salaries paid under the General Schedule in Washington, DC, and surrounding areas. Table 3 - Table 14 provide tabular pay data for each House Member office staff position. The numbers of staff for which data were counted are identified as observations in the data tables. Graphic displays are also included, providing representations of pay from three perspectives, including the following:

a line graph showing change in pay, 2001-2015, in nominal (current) and constant 2016 dollars; a comparison, at 5-, 10-, and 15- year intervals from 2015, of the cumulative percentage change in median pay for that position to changes in pay, in constant 2016 dollars, of Members of Congress and federal civilian workers paid under the General Schedule in Washington, DC, and surrounding areas; and distributions of 2015 pay in 2016 dollars, in $10,000 increments.

Between 2011 and 2015, the change in median pay, in constant 2016 dollars, increased for one position, office manager, by 0.22%, and decreased for 11 staff positions, ranging from a -3.53% decrease for field representatives to a -25.83% decrease for executive assistants. This may be compared to changes over the same period to Members of Congress, -5.10%, and General Schedule, DC, -3.19%.

Between 2006 and 2015, the change in median pay, in constant 2016 dollars, decreased for all 12 staff positions, ranging from a -1.99% decrease for legislative directors to a -24.82% decrease for executive assistants. This may be compared to changes over the same period to Members of Congress, -10.41%, and General Schedule, DC, -0.13%.

Between 2001 and 2015, the change in median pay, in constant 2016 dollars, ranged from a 4.27% increase for chiefs of staff to a -23.35% decrease for executive assistants. Of the 12 positions, one saw a pay increase, while 11 saw declines. This may be compared to changes over the same period to the pay of Members of Congress, -10.40%, and General Schedule, DC, 7.36%.