request for documents: "2004 House Employment Study" by CMF + others

[Daniel Schuman]

Hi everyone,

I am trying to find a couple of reports on House (and Senate) employment, but am not having much success.

In particular, I am looking for the Congressional Management Foundation's "2002 House Staff Employment Study" and "2004 House Staff Employment Study."

These studies were commissioned by either the Committee on House Administration or the Office of the Chief Administrative Officer, or both. They should be available on the House's intranet to any member of Congress, but no one has been able to find them. The CAO's contracting officer has not picked up her phone and won't return messages that request information. CMF cannot provide the reports to me per the terms of the contract.

Does anyone have a copy? I would be happy to borrow the report for a couple of days, or if that doesn't work, to come to your office and make copies.

And, if you happen to have a study of Senate employment, particularly the 2006 study performed by ICF, that would be fantastic as well.

I do have a copy of the 1991-2001 CMF study and the 2006 ICF study.

If you are aware of any documents beyond those listed on this wiki, http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_retention, please let me know.

Thanks for your help,

Daniel

[James Jacobs]

Hi Daniel,

check worldcat. several libraries in the DC area have some if not all
of CMF's publications:

http://www.worldcat.org/search?qt=hotseries&q=se%3A%22Congressional+Management+Foundation+report%22

Now that I see these reports, I'd like to get copies for my library,
so I'll contact CAO and try to shake them loose too.

More soon,

best,

james jacobs
stanford library
freegovinfo.info

> If you are aware of any documents beyond those listed on this wiki,http://www.opencongress.org/wiki/Congressional_staff_retention, please let

[Daniel Schuman]

We haven't had much luck getting CMF or ICF Consulting House and Senate salary reports from the last decade, although several libraries have reports going from the late 80s to the late 90s. Here's a short piece from Roll Call that contends that senior Senate staff can earn a lot more money by going to work as lobbyists.

http://bit.ly/7kZWIS

The Going Rate for Senior Senate Staff

December 18th, 2009 by Daniel Schuman

A revolving door story in Roll Call ($) yesterday reported that lobbying firm interest in hiring Capitol Hill staffers has not been sated by the weakened economy. What caught my attention, however, were these paragraphs on salaries:

Democrats are still garnering higher salaries than their Republican counterparts. In particular, Senate Democratic leadership staff, high-ranking committee staff and chiefs of staff are in demand, according to headhunters.

While the peak of the market for Democratic aides may have already passed with lobby shops and corporations expecting Democrats to lose seats in the House and the Senate in the upcoming midterm elections, the going rate for key Senate Democratic aides runs about $400,000 to $500,000, headhunters said.

But even those salaries are out of reach for most Hill staffers; several lobbyists noted Congressional aides’ outsized expectations for going downtown. Law firms, in particular, are being cautious about hiring people without an existing book of client business.

Wow. Only the House releases its Statement of Disbursements data online — the Senate will do so in 2011 — so we do not have 2009 data on the earnings of Senate staff. According to a 2006 analysis by ICF Consulting, Senate chiefs of staff earn between $114,000 and $160,659 annually, with a median salary of $157,150. (House chiefs of staff earn on average $130,000 annually, nearly $30,000 less.)

We can use these numbers as a proxy for senior Senate aides, although I don’t have a useful breakdown on what senior committee staff earn. (Nor do I know how long Senate chiefs of staff stay at their job; their House counterparts served on average 5.2 years in 2006.) If this news report is accurate, the average Senate Democratic chief of staff or senior aide could expect to triple or quadruple his or her salary by going to work as a lobbyist.

I would love to see a study of staffers who have become lobbyists, and whether they can expect a salary bump by making that transition. It would also be helpful to have public access to reports generated during the last decade for the House and Senate by the Congressional Management Foundation and ICF Consulting regarding staff pay and retention rates.

Daniel Schuman
Policy Counsel | Sunlight Foundation
Twitter: danielschuman | 202-713-5795

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