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COMPENSATION
Survey: State Salary Growth Trails ’07
What a difference a year makes: It was just a year ago that state employees were enjoying the first substantial uptick in their earnings in nearly five years. The 2007-08 median salary increase for state workers in professional and scientific occupations was 5.7 percent. This year, it's a modest 2.4 percent, according to the ninth annual public-compensation survey by the American Federation of Teachers.
The salary increase — eclipsed by a 4 percent inflation rate and by a 5.1 percent increase in overall state spending — is more in line with previous years when the survey found a median increase of 2.5 percent in 2005-06 and 1.19 percent in 2004-05. "It's good there's some forward progress," says Dan Murphy of AFT's public affairs department. "We recognize these are tough times for states, but they need to at least keep pace with inflation, which since we tracked it in March, has actually gotten worse."
Last year, the report speculated that the 5.7 percent median increase was due to healthy budgets and an attempt to make up for past program cuts. This year, the lackluster increase is blamed in part on slowing tax revenues from a weakening housing and manufacturing sector. Much like the last fiscal downturn of the early 2000s, when 37 states were forced to make mid-year budget cuts, 13 states have enacted reduced budgets this year. Yet, hopefully the 2.4 median increase "was a recognition that states need to keep investing in public services," says Murphy.
In the nine years the AFT has been tracking the salaries of state government professionals, two things haven't changed: Public-sector salaries consistently trail those of similar positions in the private sector, and collective bargaining is a factor in reducing the private-public sector salary gap. Of the 45 occupations surveyed, the survey found a collective-bargaining advantage in 42. For example, foresters in collective-bargaining states earn 18 percent more than their non-collective-bargaining counterparts, licensed practical nurses 15 percent more and economists 14 percent more.
Moreover, says Murphy, "the gap between the public and private sectors is glaringly larger this year." In 20 of the 24 cases where job comparisons were made, private-sector salaries exceeded those in the public sector. Across these 24 classifications, private-sector salaries are about 26 percent higher than those of state employees, and in at least 12 jobs the gap is 30 percent or more.
The jobs with the largest salary increases include chemists, psychologists, programmers and substance-abuse counselors. Librarians and tax auditors actually made less on average than fiscal 2007.
The annual AFT survey, now in its ninth year, includes all 50 states and the District of Columbia. This year's survey is based on salaries in effect as of March 1, 2008. It is the only national snapshot of state public salaries available and is used by state human-resource departments, union leaders and other labor-relations professionals.