White House Salaries
The White House (wikimedia)
Via Noam Scheiber, if you’re interested in looking up the salary of your favorite White House staffer, just download this list here (PDF). It seems that Rahm and the various folks carrying an “assistant to the president” title make $172,200 while the most-junior staff clock in at $35,000.
I will say that one thing I like about Washington is that relative to other major American metro areas, DC is relatively egalitarian in economic terms. The $172,200 that the top White House staff make is good money but it’s hardly enough to put you in the stratosphere of the American economic elite. And yet, these are some of the most important and successful men and women in Washington. Go to New York or LA or Chicago and the biggest of the big shots will be making 10 or 20 times that.
32 Responses to “White House Salaries”
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July 2nd, 2009 at 1:48 pm
of course, once you put in a few years as the $172K top white house staffer, your ability to make 10x that going forward is enhanced by, owe, 172x at a minimum….
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:49 pm
I will say that one thing I like about Washington is that relative to other major American metro areas, DC is relatively egalitarian in economic terms.
Yeah, if you work for the government. Otherwise, for the economic elite it is pretty much the same as any other big U.S. city.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
10 or 20 times. Or 100 to 1000 times…
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Good thing lobbyists earn no more than $172K in order to keep that groovy egalitarian thing going in D.C.
July 2nd, 2009 at 1:54 pm
I will say that one thing I like about Washington is that relative to other major American metro areas, DC is relatively egalitarian in economic terms.
(…)
Go to New York or LA or Chicago and the biggest of the big shots will be making 10 or 20 times that.
Go 5-10 years in the future or the past, and that is what those people make. The revolving door between public service and the highest paid jobs in the private sector is swinging ever faster.
The idea that Summers and Rahm are living on a “relatively egalitarian” salary is laughable. That’s their pocket money after years of shilling for the financial industry.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:05 pm
Matt’s point is actually dead on, and is one I’ve been making for years. I’m a Northern VA native (from Fairfax County.) Fairfax County has the highest average household income in the country (or at least is right up there.) However, I would be really surprised to find that it has a percentage of super-high earners (let’s say 500k+) compared to other “wealthy” places (New York, San Francisco, etc.) What you DO have is TONS of people making between about 100k and 300k. It’s about as solidly upper (or upper-upper if you want) middle class and white collar as anywhere in the country. Yes, lobbyists make a fortune. But there aren’t that many of them, at all. The second largest industry, after working for the government itself, is working for government contactors, who do much of the actual work of the government. My father worked for one of the largest of these, and ran one of 16 business units in a big company. He made about $175k (plus stock and some other things.) Again, good money, but not CRAZY money.
Aside from Carlyle, there isn’t much finance in DC, and aside from being a high level lobbyist (which is a REALLY hard thing to become,) there are way more “very good regular jobs” than there are ones that will make you a fortune.
Although there are lots of goddamn lawyers.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
This is one of the most naive posts I have ever read by Matt Y. Which salary-sacrificing egalitarians are buying million dollar townhouses in Mount Pleasant, exactly?
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:11 pm
This post is a joke, right? We all know Rahm Emanuel is a rich guy, yes? And that he became rich because he worked in the freaking White House. This isn’t a big secret, despite the fact he didn’t get paid by the White House. There’s nothing fucking egalitarian about it.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Yeah, but the salary figures don’t account for the lucrative shoe contracts from Adidas, Nike, etc…
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:15 pm
Here we go. Rahm Emanuel made $15.5M dollars in 3.5 years after leaving the Clinton white house. Amortize that over his 16 years since Clinton was elected, and that’s about $1M per year, plus whatever he’s earned from DC (apparently about $150-$200K per). That’s pretty decent coin, without even adding in how he’ll further cash in after he leaves the Obama White House.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:19 pm
And yet, these are some of the most important and successful men and women in Washington.
And yet, Ed Rogers and his wife, two of the real string-pullers, live in a mansion nearly double the size of Monticello. How might that be?
Pay no attention to the unelected, unaccountable Village Elite behind the curtain, Matt.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:20 pm
“[A]side from being a high level lobbyist (which is a REALLY hard thing to become,…)
Not so hard if your resume includes being an “assistant to the president.”
This might be the stupidest Yglesias post ever.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:27 pm
The $172,200 that the top White House staff make is good money but it’s hardly enough to put you in the stratosphere of the American economic elite.
And yet, at the same time, it’s *easily* enough to put you in “a few years at this salary and you’ll never have to work again except for luxuries and your own amusement” territory, even aside from the lobbying and other post-WH career opportunities. When that’s considered “relatively egalitarian”, class in this country is pretty screwed up.
And, also at the same time, Obama’s tax increases for the rich start another 40% or so above *that*. I think literally nobody in his administration except himself would be affected (although, come to think of it, the threshold might be based on family income, and then people who also have very well-paid spouses would be included too, unless they file separately). We really are talking about the quite substantially rich – people who receive more money in a year than most people have at one time any time during their lives.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:30 pm
The revolving door complaints, but I think they have the problem with this post exactly backwards. The important people in Washington don’t make nearly enough.
It’s ridiculous than corporate CEO’s are getting eight figures for mediocrity and even outright failure; or that a place like Merrill Lynch could have over a thousand people earn $1,000,000 in a year. But even I don’t have a problem with the CEO firm with 10,000 employees getting a million bucks, and the top line of executives getting a half-million. And yet the most powerful people in the most powerful country in the history of the world, with an economy that accounts for a quarter of the planet’s GDP, need three full terms in congress to get to a million? At current salaries, given the need for travel and two households for most, a congressperson who doesn’t have outside wealth and has a couple of kids in college really can find it hard to make ends meet.
The people who run the big stuff – Fed, Treasury, Defense, State – ought to be paid like CEO’s, or at least what we agree is a conscionable salary for a CEO. Their senior deputies, and everyone in congress, ought to have their salaries doubled. Then we could have some real teeth in limits on revolving doors. And I would be willing to live with how it will kill Matt’s egalitarian dream.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Meanwhile at Goldman Sachs, average pay is now over $700,000 per year. The White House is a sweatshop in comparison.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:33 pm
A White House job–even a menial one–is very desirable, and so many people are willing to work for significantly less than they would be able to make at a less high-profile job that requires the same skills. This could be simply for the personal satisfaction of working in the White House, to pad one’s resume for future employment, or both.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:39 pm
It’s egalitarian in the sense that govt employees are pretty well capped at less-than-disgustingly-rich salaries, but as pretty much everyone has indicated, this ignores the fantastically wealthy people in the DC area who make their money from the govt at one or two steps remove. And the govt to lobbying and corporate executive revolving door makes the claim of egalitarianism seem incredibly naive.
Really, you tell people that DC is egalitarian and people are going to give you the same looks given to Hollywood executives- and I think everyone who has friends or family in Hollywood has heard a variation of this- who suppose Joe Sixpack brings in 150k.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:41 pm
yes 10 or 20 is a huge low ball.
I just got an email from a guy who makes $15 million a year, and I’d be insanely surprised if anyone even knew the name.
Oprah makes what…$250 million a year?
Back in 2005/2006, the top paid hedgefund managers made over $1 billion a year. The “average” ones made over $300,000,000.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:54 pm
To be fair, government pay particularly for staffers has always sucked. For most of the ones I know it’s 25k-35k. That’s why I had to laugh when one of people defending income levels at JP Morgan, said we should look at what all those staffers on Capitol Hill make.
We know. It’s practically nothing.
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
[...] Here Matthew Yglesias praises Washington DC for the fact that the bigger-time people who work in the White House make ‘only’ $172k/year. (Of course, this is merely their official salary now, not whatever perks they’re getting, condos in their sister-in-law’s name etc., nor whatever post-administration consulting/lobbying/etc. gigs they’ll be taking.) Anyway, to Matthew, all of this makes Washington DC ‘relatively egalitarian’, and he ‘likes’ that, compared to New York or LA. Longtime Yglesiasphiles will recognize this as a recurring theme: he is obviously intensely jealous of people who make a lot more money than he does and come from even more wealth than he does, but as a lefty in good standing can’t admit that he craves wealth, and so wants social policy to make things more ‘egalitarian’ to relieve him of the resultant stress/jealousy he feels (and imagines everyone else feels as well). [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 2:59 pm
Sure, but a large reason why the pay is so low is because the job is so attractive that it doesn’t have to pay well. I bet most 100-hours-per-week hedge fund types in New York would LOVE to trade places with Rahm Emanuel and his colleagues, but I bet the reverse is not true at all.
Plus, all these powerful White House types can, if they want, go on to very lucrative private professions and book deals later. The Clintons are worth between $100 and 200 million, and it is all new wealth they accrued during and after their presidency.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
All you are really seeing is the ‘egalitarianism’ of laundering the compensation for peddled influence. The positions are clearly far more valuable than the public salaries represent, and much money is spent obtaining the influence in the first place. Families don’t send their children to the right universities to major in economically useless subjects and then arrange for them to have these positions because they are higher-minded. It isn’t coincidence that after they hold important positions that, despite frequently having no particular skills that would warrant their employment, they find themselves commanding large salaries as executives, analysts, consultants, and so on. What in Rahm Emanuel’s educational background or work experience do you suggest qualified him to be an investment banker? What in Dick Cheney’s educational background or work experience qualified him to be the CEO of Haliburton? Yet both of those men went on to earn millions of dollars in those positions, without any particular reason to think that without their public positions they would have been given the time of day.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Hey, I’d squeak along at 100K or 172K for a few years. A whole lot of my expenses would be comped (transportation, free eats at functions etc). I wouldn’t save any money, granted, but following my stint at the WH the really big bucks could start rolling in.
A whole lot of people want to work at the upper levels of gov’t. and its not for the salary. Its an investment.
July 2nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
This is Yglesias justifying this report about federal jobs.
The NYT report indicates federal work force cotinues to grow while all other economic sector employment continues to shrink.
The quote:
“In fact, while private sector employment has fallen 5.74 percent since the recession began in December 2007, government payrolls have grown 0.83 percent”
The only justification that Yglesias has is that he likes low multipliers, he expects federal program expansion to be an economic drag. He knows it, CAP knows it; hence the reason they continually use accounting fraud in their reports.
Summary: CAP and Yglesias are in the business of making the poor even poorer. Was there any doubt, really?
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:00 pm
[...] 2, 2009 by ajw93 Well, I was going to post this as a comment over on MY’s blog, but then I realized that would be stupid since it’s really just yet another BigLaw [...]
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:28 pm
While I agree Matt that government jobs do pay fair and decently relative to the corporate world, I would also note that a lot of these people making these salaries are already fabulously enriched by the private sector before they even get to their jobs. So they are just as wealthy as the NY/LA crowd in some cases.
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:31 pm
“This is Yglesias justifying this report about federal jobs.
The NYT report indicates federal work force cotinues to grow while all other economic sector employment continues to shrink.
The quote:
“In fact, while private sector employment has fallen 5.74 percent since the recession began in December 2007, government payrolls have grown 0.83 percent”
The only justification that Yglesias has is that he likes low multipliers, he expects federal program expansion to be an economic drag. He knows it, CAP knows it; hence the reason they continually use accounting fraud in their reports.
Summary: CAP and Yglesias are in the business of making the poor even poorer. Was there any doubt, really?”
Wait….what?
July 2nd, 2009 at 5:33 pm
MY’s ignorance about Rahm’s riches and their origin makes him look pretty clueless here.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:05 am
This is an exceedingly ignorant post. It’s as though MY is trolling his readers, as surely he knows better. I think the real question here is whether these people should be paid more to reduce the pull of private money. I think the answer is probably yes.
13: This is also exceedingly ignorant. If your salary is 175K, you’ll be lucky to take 120K. Even if you live dirt cheap at 20K a year, it’s going to take 5 years to get to 500K. There is no way in hell you can retire young in the United States with 500K. At 65 with medicare and SS, you might be okay, if you’re okay with continuing to live on 20K/year. Which is totally impractical for a familyr, of course. 175K/year is only a lot if you have job security for life. Otherwise you always have to worry about the times where you won’t be making nearly as much.
July 3rd, 2009 at 9:08 am
27: I, also, am confused. When the private sector is struggling to find jobs, the public sector can step in, particularly with infrastructure investment projects like transit. That is the whole concept behing counter-cyclic spending isn’t it? Why is it so hard for some people to understand?
July 3rd, 2009 at 10:48 am
@29: 20k/year is more than some people’s total income and they are still alive. (In fact, since you’re counting after tax, I think that may include me.) You are not distinguishing well between necessities and luxuries, probably because you have never had to. I did specifically mention “except for luxuries”, which of course many people do value enough to be willing to work for them. Others value them but can’t afford them even with 60 hours a week of exhausting work (not as White House staffers, obviously).
At 65 with medicare and SS, you might be okay, if you’re okay with continuing to live on 20K/year. Which is totally impractical for a familyr, of course.
You’re equivocating between a 65-year-old and someone with a family that needs extensive economic support – how can those possibly be the same person? (Of course, if you want to support an economically idle spouse, that’s going to cost more – it is, after all, a luxury which many Americans cannot afford. If each half of a couple has 20k/year that’s almost median family income, and you certainly can’t say it’s impossible to survive on that when millions of people are doing exactly that.)
July 3rd, 2009 at 2:10 pm
The highest incomes in Washington go to lobbyists and lawyers. If one is in DC and greedy then public service is like going to business school — the payoff is in the future.