While the median salary rate can be a useful measure for analyzing trends across offices or states, it's important to recognize that many factors impact median salary, including staff size (i.e., offices with a smaller staff tend to have higher median salary rates), leadership or committee positions held by a member, member seniority, ratio of D.C. versus district staff and utilization of shared, temporary or part-time staff.
Annual salary rates are an estimation of the salary payments a staff member would receive for a particular position if that position were held for an entire year. This number is calculated based on actual payments received and the number of days he or she held that position. Annual salary rate data only includes staff working in full-time, permanent positions. Where a staffer works for a single member in multiple offices concurrently (e.g., in both the personal office and a leadership or committee office) all salary payments are considered together in calculating the annual salary rate. If a staffer works in different positions that do not overlap (e.g., a promotion within an office, or leaving one office to accept a new position in a different office), annual salary rates are calculated and included separately for each sequential position. Staffers who are shared among multiple member offices during a particular time period are excluded from the data, as are positions held for fewer than 30 days in a year.
