By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is Part 7 of our multi-part 2021 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 Cline and Associates Premium Information Services and contact Carly Alcombrack at Cline and Associates and she’ll explain how you can become one: CAlcombrack@clinelawfirm.com. 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 2021 Ranking
Firefighter 25 Year BA 2021 Ranking
Corrections Officer 5 Year No Degree 2021 Ranking
Corrections Officer 25 Year BA 2021 Ranking
We report Fire Wages using the “Net Hourly Wage” analysis and list both the 5 Year No Degree and 25 Year BA wages. Contracts include City fire departments, County Fire Districts, and a growing number of Regional Fire Authorities. For fire contracts, the 25-year wages are more commonly include longevity premiums and less commonly education premiums. Net wage analysis is essential for a review of Fire wages, given the great variability in hours scheduled and leave hours allowed.
As with the City Police Contracts, discussed in our last article, the top 10 are weighted heavily with King County Fire Districts These include King County Fire District 20, 4, 16, 39 and 36. The Cities of Bothell, Everett, Kirkland, Redmond, and Vancouver on the 5 year top 10. Because the hours of work, Kelly Days and leave times factor into these hourly rankings our premium website includes tables with that data listed.
Our Corrections rankings include a report of County Corrections Officers and municipal jailers. Not surprisingly, the report reveals a wide spread of wages.
King County tops the 5 Year and the 25 Year BA list. Marysville comes in 10th at 5 Year and moves up to 3rd at the 25 Year BA. The top 10 ranked at 25 Years BA have 5 counties (King, San Juan, Clark, Pierce, and Snohomish Counties) and five cities including Marysville, Kent, Kirkland, Puyallup, and Lynnwood. SCORE drops to 13th on the 25-year BA list. With its seven-member cities it is sized larger than many counties. The 5 Year no degree Corrections Officer top 10 wage ranks are listed below.
In some future articles in this series, we’ll delve into factors that 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.
