Congressional Staff: Overworked and Undervalued (Issue 3: Turnover)
This blog series outlines the current state of Congressional staffing. In the coming weeks, we will discuss the current pressure staffers are under due to staffing levels, overwork, and turnover in order to demonstrate why Congressional Communities is advocating for Congress to have more and better supported staff.
Throughout Congress, staff turnover is an issue. In the Congress member’s district and D.C. offices, the important positions of case workers and others whose duty it is to work with constituents are the very people who are prone to leave, due to low pay and long hours.
Additional staff won’t solve all of Congress’s problems with meeting the needs of constituents. Staff must also be supported and nurtured. There has to be an effort to keep them in Congress for the long term.
What Causes Turnover?
Based on what we’ve discussed about staffers having increasingly high workloads, it follows that the work of a Congressional staffer is often high stress and high responsibility. Many staffers who work for Congress cite wanting to help people — as well as their desire to do something meaningful with their work — as reasons why they stay at their jobs, despite the stress.
The only problem is that desire alone does not keep these staffers at their positions. Even though Congressional staff report being generally satisfied with and engaged in their jobs, 46% of them also report that they are “likely” or “very likely” to look for another job (CMF, SHRM). Planning to move on is especially true of D.C. staff, where 63% report being “likely” or “very likely” to look for another job (Figure 11).
Additional studies report similar findings about Congressional staff’s intent to leave Congress:
“More than two of every five staffers plan to leave within just two years. That is, 43 percent of staff plan to depart by the end of the Congress in which they are employed. In the business and nonprofit world, an organization expecting to lose nearly half its workforce by the end of its industry’s normal business cycle would be considered a colossal failure.” (New America)
These desires negatively impact the overall average tenure of Congressional staffers. According to New America, in 2019, the average tenure for Congressional office staff, factoring in their total time in Congress (not just their time in one office) was only 3.1 years — while the national average tenure for one job, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, is 4.2 years.
As one senior Senate Legislative Director put it, in a study performed by the Congressional Management Foundation:
“The Hill is a difficult environment for retaining quality staff. High pressure, tight deadlines, long hours, bad management, and low (comparable) compensation all contribute to high employee turnover and make it difficult to ensure that quality staff is developed, trained, and retained.” (CMF)
Low pay and a lack of promotion opportunities are key reasons for the short employment rates across all Congressional staffers. They can expect to work long, grueling hours with little compensation when it comes to salary (National Affairs). Median salaries for Congressional member personal office staff are often less than $50,000, and even the top 10% of salaries in these offices barely reach $100,000 (The Atlantic).
Compare those salaries to what they can earn by leaving government. Former Congressional staffers can expect to earn significantly more in the private sector solely because of their experience working in Congress (Figure 12). The Sunlight Foundation estimated “lobbyists who list a government staff position somewhere in their lobbyist disclosure firms (sic) were associated with a median revenue of $300,000. That’s almost three times the median revenue we estimate that lobbyists without government experience generated: $112,500.” When the salary of the average Congressional staffer has stagnated well below $100,000, it becomes crystal clear from a financial perspective why so many staffers may want to leave the Hill (The Atlantic, Vox). Their talents will net them much larger paychecks in other sectors. It’s possible that this stark difference in salaries has increased since 2012, though no estimate of equal detail has been made that we’re aware of.
Furthermore, only a very low percentage of senior staffers report being very satisfied with the Human Resources aspect of their jobs, indicating that only a small number of Congressional senior staffers feel that the training and support of Congressional staffers by Human Resources is adequate (CMF). If staffers aren’t being supported in their jobs properly, and they aren’t being well-paid either (and can be paid better elsewhere), turnover begins to make a lot more sense.
High turnover comes with a price.
“An institution that cannot help its employees develop the knowledge, skills and abilities they need to perform their duties — or compensate and retain them once they do — becomes significantly less effective than it has the potential to be. When that institution is Congress, and the employees are those supporting the people at the heart of our representative democracy, the entire nation has cause for concern.” (CMF)
Consequences of Turnover
We’ve established that the average Congress member is understaffed and that the staff they have are given very difficult workloads with pay that effectively has them working a full year for the same amount a lobbyist makes before it’s summer … If you were in their shoes, is there any doubt where you’d be heading?
While we can see the reasons for why staff turnover has become a prominent issue, an equally pressing matter is how it’s an issue — how does turnover create serious consequences for our government? Is it really that bad?
The answer is that yes — it is. Throughout Congress, staff turnover is an issue. In the Congress member’s district and D.C. offices, the important positions of case workers and others whose duty it is to work with constituents are the very people who are prone to leave, due to low pay and long hours. Below is a table of the average amount of hours worked per week for Congressional staff, as sampled by the think tank New America.
We at Congressional Communities have experienced this firsthand, having met several of our Representative’s staffers. Prior to the pandemic, when inviting them to a community meeting (starting at 6 PM), one staff member spoke and explained that she had been meeting with constituents continuously since she started work at 8 AM that morning. It was 7 PM before she left our gathering. (By the way, she was beyond pleasant, offered great information, and was fully engaged. Odds are extremely high she will not be there more than a few years, if that.)
Consider the knowledge lost when someone who knows the community and its concerns is replaced by someone who does not and has to start over. New staffers are always starting from square one in getting to know and earning the trust of the local community — and as they’re getting up to speed, the representative no longer has an effective read on that community’s viewpoint.
This lost knowledge is also evident in the turnover of Congressional committee staff.
There are twenty ‘standing’ committees in the House of Representatives, and sixteen in the Senate — standing is a fancy and simple word for a permanent committee that meets regularly. Additionally, there are eight “Special, Select, and Other” Committees, and four joint committees — ones with both Senate and House members participating (Congress). Each committee has its own dedicated staff assisting in the research and preparation of materials for meetings.
Ever wonder who actually writes those long bills? Ever wonder who writes and briefs the members of Congress on the 3,500 or so bills that get written every year, 200 of which on average get voted into law? Bills that include a budget which accounts for 20% of the U.S. economy (a figure sure to rise during the pandemic)? The answer to all these questions is simple — it’s these committee staffers. These are crucial staff members with institutional knowledge that is lost when they leave.
It cannot be overstated. Their expertise on policy, as well as their intimate knowledge of Congressional processes, are essential elements in the proper functioning of the legislature. But turnover results in a lack of institutional memory, as well as a great amount of resources being funneled towards the continuous replacing and training of employees. This actively harms the productivity of Congress. An April 2020 report by the Congressional Management Foundation puts it plainly:
“There are no staff positions in Senate or House committees or personal offices with a median tenure of more than four years. That means most of the key staffers on Capitol Hill — the ones who directly support the policy and constituent engagement work of Senators and Representatives — are fairly new to their jobs. This has been the case for at least 10 years. Staff turnover on Capitol Hill is continuous” (CMF).
As the Legislative Branch Capacity Working Group cites in reference to a sweeping removal and replacement to the Senate Rules Committee’s staff, “the understanding of Senate precedents and processes cannot be replaced overnight” (Leg Branch). But this sentiment rings true for all staffers in Congress; a deep, hands-on, living, breathing understanding of Senate or House processes, policy, or function is not something that can be learned instantaneously. No matter how you look at it, it isn’t wise to continuously replace staff the way we do now.
Taking all of this into consideration, the huge amount of staff continually opting to leave Congress for higher pay and better working conditions is not at all surprising. Again, what would you do?
Whether it’s from staff becoming too overworked, or staff with institutional knowledge being consistently replaced, the result is the same — an inefficient Congress. Investing more in Congressional staff in terms of hiring more staff, retaining staff for longer periods, as well as paying those staffers more would go a long way in improving the productivity in Congress.
If you want to learn more about issues like these, we hope you’ll consider getting involved with your Congressional Community and letting your neighbors know concrete steps we can take to make Congress better.
