A few years ago, I worked as a technical writer for a big computer company. I never thought all that much about whether I made more or less than the other employees--mostly software engineers--but assumed I was on par, if only because I had a master's degree and most of them didn't. One day I was updating a spreadsheet that listed all the employees and how many "credits" each had, which was the company's method of disguising how much we earned. It was pretty easy to figure out the relationship between the so-called credits and my actual salary, and I discovered to my horror that I was the lowest paid of some 40 people on the team. Not low, not medium low, but the bottom of the barrel. As you can imagine, I became wholly distracted from my work for some time. Knowing that I was pretty much slime--at least financially speaking--totally blew my image of myself as a white-collar professional. Maybe I would have been happier being ignorant.
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I've always had a deep-seated obsession with knowing how much people earn, and yet I simultaneously keep mum about my own cash flow. Some people spill their finances willy-nilly, which I consider a reflection of bad personal boundaries. I've also found that people who earn less than I do (which is just about everyone here in salary-poor Vermont) become uncomfortable if they know that number.
Reading the SLA Annual Salary Survey for 2004 fed my curiosity, because I got to know everyone else's salary. The good news is that this time my salary is not floating among the muck ... and what a relief that was! My compliments to John Latham, director of information for SLA and editor of this excellent publication. The report is clearly written, includes a solid amount of detail, and covers all the areas on which I would want data.
While my current yearly earnings are quite a bit under the New England median of $64,000, there is hope, because this average is just a beat off from the $64,082 that Pacific Coast information specialists earn, making us the two highest, paid geographical areas (p. 56). In fact, information specialists in most of the country earn less than I do, starting at a low of $46,625 in the East South Central area of the United States, which includes Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Missouri. My sister information specialist Melissa works in Alabama, so I wonder how she feels about this.
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Where Do You Fit?
I also earn less than the $60,000 median for people with a master's degree, but this may be because my graduate work was in educational technology, not in library science (p. 59). Considering that I am just about two years into this career, officially speaking, I am earning more than the median for two or less years of experience ($40,000) or three to five years ($47,000), which indicates that I'm either lucky or possibly just brilliant at my job (p. 59). Finally, I find that I'm in the ballpark for a workplace with 500 to 999 employees that is nonprofit, academic, and a federally funded (in part) institution (pp. 61 and 62). Could be a lot worse.
Sadly, I make less than either women ($57,300) or men ($63,000) as a whole, and I am horrified that there continues to be such a gap between women's and men's salaries for the same job (p. 60). Looking at the salary distribution by ethnicity/race chart on page 60, I notice that minorities of all types are still woefully underrepresented in the profession. While salaries for all ethnicities tend to land near $60,000, Native Americans/Alaskans are at the peak, earning a median of $65,000, while Hispanics are at the bottom, at just under $50,000. However, these averages have less meaning when you see that only 25 Native American/Alaskans and 44 Hispanics were represented.
Whites are by far the majority with 2,088 out of 2,320 total respondents. I mentioned this in my discussion with Daphne, an information specialist in the Pacific region, the area with the highest average salary. She replied, "What activities are the national associations taking on to increase minority representation in the profession?" Good question, Daphne, and one that SLA addresses in the sidebar to this article.
Geography and other factors provide a context. You might ask, "How much am I earning compared with other jobs where I live?" or "Am I being paid on a local or a national scale?" I'm in an unusual situation, because I work for a relatively small company in Vermont, but it is part of a fairly large national company.
We are paid on a national scale, which means I'm earning a heck of a lot more than I'd ever earn at most other Vermont jobs. In fact, I looked for a new job a few years ago when our federal funding was winding up. Every single local employer paid $10,000 less than I was then earning! On the other hand, considering that I am being paid on this national scale, you might think I'd be earning something closer to the average for New England, but not so. Still, I'm an optimist, and I have a job I love with top-notch benefits, so no complaints from this peanut gallery.
One particularly interesting phenomenon is that as my career progressed, each new job offered a higher salary, even when it wasn't necessarily a move up the career ladder. Twelve years ago, when I first moved to Vermont, I was happy to be earning $24,000 as a computer training coordinator. Today I'm making more than twice that, and have never had a job that paid less. In some inexplicable way, my expectations and confidence translated to a higher salary. This despite living in a state where the average salary is less than that $24,000 I earned at my first job. The chief administrative officer of our parent company recently commented to me that salary levels work something like this: "First you read the books, then you write the books, then they write a book about you." I suppose I'm in the second stage, fantasizing about the third.
Need to Know
What does all this have to do with the SLA Annual Salary Survey? Actually, quite a lot. You might ask why anyone would pay to find out where in the barrel they float, but it's more than that. Having this kind of information gives you data for negotiation, and, as we all know, information is the foundation of our work. It helped me develop reasonable expectations about my own possible future salary, as well as where to put my efforts in terms of the factors that affect my earnings.
For example, while we can't change our gender without a great deal of effort, we might consider focusing our professional development efforts on getting an advanced degree, working for a for-profit organization, and increasing our skills in database development and people management--all of which the report indicates increase earning potential. Daphne added that if she were considering an advanced degree or additional certification, information on salary distribution based on primary job responsibility might influence her choice of focus areas.
She said, "It would be interesting to know if the range in salaries between areas of responsibility is based on availability of staff in that area or perceived difficulty of the work or something else." Being a chief information officer or vice president can also top your salary out at $100,000, but I figure I'm not all that likely to get there, considering how cranky I get when I'm required to manage people.
I asked Daphne what would make her pony up the $125 (nonmember, but only $55 for members) cost of the report, and she responded, "It would make sense for someone who had multiple uses for it, like a large human resources department that had several people who fell under these job descriptions. A library might also purchase it for a reference tool." My friend Melissa took a more personal tack, saying she would find it very useful to research a future career, particularly in knowing what to focus on to move up.
Information is power, and I like knowing how to leverage this power, both professionally and personally. I'm glad to know that I'm not at the bottom of the barrel, even if I'm bobbing along the whitewater rapids when it comes to pinning down exactly how much I should be earning. Who knows? Maybe I'll take the report with me to my next job review and see about asking for a raise.
RELATED ARTICLE: If You Have Questions ...
By Cybele Elaine Werts
I had some questions about the report, which I addressed to the editor John R. Latham, the director of the SLA Information Center.
Information Outlook: On page one of the survey, you say that of the 3,054 completed, only 2,539 provided enough information to be included in the analysis. Can you explain what you meant by that?
