By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is Part 5 of our 11 Part Summer 2013 Wage Series. In our last article, we covered Commissioned Deputy and Police Officer Wages. In this article, we turn to Firefighter and Corrections Officer Wages. We’ll cover Dispatcher and Records Clerk Wages in the next article.
In this article we provide highlights of the state ranking report but for detailed data, you’ll want to explore our Premium Website. If you’re not currently a Premium Website subscriber, you can review our services at Cline and Casillas Premium Information Services and contact Donna Steinmetz at Cline and Casillas and she’ll explain how you can become one. For current premium subscribers below are links to some of the additional available Firefighter and Corrections Officer Wage Rank reports:
Firefighter 5 Year No Degree 2015 Ranking
Firefighter 25 Year BA 2015 Ranking
We report Fire Wages using the Net Hourly Wage analysis and list both the 5 Year No Degree and 25 Year BA wages. For fire contracts, the 25 year wages are more commonly a result of longevity premiums and less commonly education premiums.
At the 5 Year no degree level, the top 10 include King County Fire District 36, 39 and 4, the cities of Bothell, Kirkland, Everett and Redmond as well as Kent and Valley Regional Fire Authorities. Seattle Firefighters lag back at 33rd place, moving slightly higher to 22nd place at the 25 Year BA wage ranking. Pierce County Fire District 3 moves up to second place at the 25 Year BA wage ranking and both Snohomish Fire Districts 1 and 7 are in the top ten. Because the hours of work, Kelly Days and leave times factor into these hourly rankings our premium website includes tables with that data listed.
| 5 Year No Degree Hourly Rank 2015 | Cities/Fire Districts |
| 1 | King FD 36 |
| 2 | Bothell |
| 3 | Kent Regional Fire Authority |
| 4 | Kirkland |
| 5 | Valley Regional Fire Authority |
| 6 | King FD 39 |
| 7 | Everett |
| 8 | King FD 4 |
| 9 | Redmond |
| 10 | Snohomish FD 7 |
Our Corrections rankings include a blended report of both County Corrections Officers and municipal jailers. And among the Counties some are interest arbitration eligible (Counties with a population greater than 70,000) and some are not (those below 70,000). (No city jail officers are eligible regardless of jurisdiction size.) Not surprisingly, the report reveals a wide spread of wages.
Surprisingly, Fife, supported by its high Assessed Valuation per capita, tops the 25 Year BA rankings, with King County and its 2012 wage, not far behind. Marysville comes in at number 3, beating San Juan County jailers by a mere $40 at the 25 Year BA level. The top 10 ranked at 25 Years BA are evenly split with 4 more counties ranked behind Marysville (San Juan, Pierce, Thurston, and Snohomish. Kirkland, Issaquah and Lynwood finish off the last of the 5 cities to make the top 10 ranked cities by 25 Year BA wage. Ferry County pulls up the end of the list of 55 corrections facilities at $3152 per month, less than $30 behind next to last Whitman County. We did not discuss the 5 Year no degree Corrections Officer wage ranks but they are listed below.
| 5 Year No Degree Rank 2015 | Jurisdictions |
| 1 | Pierce County |
| 2 | Fife |
| 3 | King County |
| 4 | Issaquah |
| 5 | Snohomish County |
| 6 | Thurston County |
| 7 | SCORE |
| 8 | Marysville |
| 9 | Kirkland |
| 10 | Kent |
In some future articles in this series, we’ll delve into factors which appear to contribute to rankings including geographic location, population and assessed valuation. Before we move into that, in the next article of this series, we’ll finish our ranking with Dispatchers and Records Clerks.
