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

Introduction

Levels of pay for congressional staff are a source of recurring questions among Members of Congress, congressional staff, and the public. In House committees, the chair and ranking member set the terms and conditions of employment for majority and minority staff, respectively. This includes job titles and descriptions; rates of pay, subject to maximum levels; and resources available 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 committee offices; or comparison of congressional staff pay levels with those of other federal government pay systems.

Publicly available information sources do not provide aggregated congressional staff pay data in a readily retrievable form. 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 committee staff compensation over time.

This report provides pay data for 11 staff position titles that are used in House committees, and for which sufficient data could be identified. Position titles and the years for which data are available since 2001 are provided in Table 1 . Titles were identified through a two-step process. The first step identified 358 job titles used in House committees in 2014. Of those titles, 282, or 78.8%, were filled by only one staff member, and were excluded. In the second step, the remaining 76 titles were assessed to determine how many of the House committees for which data were available employed staff with each title. Fifty-nine position titles that were used by six or fewer panels (five for minority positions) were excluded.

Pay data were then collected for the remaining 17 positions. In order to be included, annual pay data for staff in each position needed to be available from at least five committees (four for minority positions). This eliminated another 6 positions, leaving 11. When committees had more than one staff member with the same job title, data for no more than two staff per committee were collected. House committee staff had to hold a position with the same job title in the same committee for the entire year examined, and not receive pay from any other congressional employing authority for their data to be included. Every recorded payment ascribed in the LegiStorm data to those staff for the fiscal year is tabulated. 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.

Pay data for staff working in Senate committee offices are available in CRS Report R44325, Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in Senate Committees, FY2001-FY2014 . Data describing the pay of congressional staff working in the personal offices of Senators and Members of the House are available in CRS Report R44324, Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in Senators' Offices, FY2001-FY2014 , and CRS Report R44323, Staff Pay Levels for Selected Positions in House Member Offices, 2001-2014 , respectively.

Data Concerns

Data presented here are subject to some challenges that could affect findings presented or their interpretation. Some of the concerns include the following:

Given the large number of positions with titles held by one House employee, data provided here almost certainly do not represent all of the jobs carried out by House committee staff. The manner in which staff titles are assigned might have implications about the representativeness of the data provided. Of positions for which data were collected, two broad categories emerge. The first category identifies position titles that usually apply to one staff member per committee. Since almost all available data were collected for those positions, pay information provided is likely to be highly representative of what House committees pay staff in those positions. The second category includes positions for which committees might hire two or more staff members. Since pay data were collected for no more than two staff per committee for each position, it is more likely that data for those positions are a sample of staff in those positions rather than nearly complete data, and therefore may be less closely representative of what all staff in those positions are paid. 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. Potential differences might 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 the same or 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 data and visualizations for each position. Table 2 provides the maximum payable rates for House committee 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), various years, expressed in 2016 dollars.

Table 3 provides the available cumulative percentage changes in pay in constant 2016 dollars for each of the 11 positions, Members of Congress, and federal civilian workers paid under the General Schedule in Washington, DC, and surrounding areas. Table 4 - Table 14 provide tabular pay data for each House committee staff position. The numbers of staff whose 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, depending on data availability, in nominal (current) and constant 2016 dollars; a comparison at 5-, 10-, and 15-year intervals from 2015, depending on data availability, of the cumulative percentage change of pay for that position, in constant 2016 dollars, to changes in pay 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, ranged from a 14.96% increase for communications directors to a -12.24% decrease for subcommittee staff directors. Of the eight staff positions for which data were available, two positions saw pay increases while six saw declines. This may be compared to changes to the pay of Members of Congress, -5.10%, and General Schedule, DC, -3.19%, over the same period.

Between 2006 and 2015, all of the seven staff positions for which data were available saw decreases. The change in median pay, in constant 2016 dollars, ranged from a -4.78% decrease for counsels to a -31.06% decrease for professional staff members. This may be compared to changes to the pay of Members of Congress, -10.41%, and General Schedule, DC, -0.13%, over the same period.

Between 2001 and 2015, all of the five staff positions for which data were available saw decreases. The change in median pay, in constant 2016 dollars, ranged from a -9.22% decrease for counsels to a -22.32% decrease for professional staff members. This may be compared to changes to the pay of Members of Congress, -10.40%, and General Schedule, DC, 7.36%, over the same period.