By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is part 8 of our continuing series on Washington public safety employee wages. In this issue, we report on wage rankings for 911 dispatchers and police records clerks.
In this article we a brief discussion of the wage rankings but for the 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 Dispatcher and Records Clerk Wage Rank reports:
Dispatcher 5 Year No Degree 2021 Ranking
Dispatcher 25 Year BA 2021 Ranking
Records Clerks 5 Year No Degree 2021 Ranking
Records Clerk 25 Year BA 2021 Ranking
The Cline and Associates Dispatcher survey includes 55 cities, counties, and 911 agencies. Seattle tops the 5 Year list and is 3rd at the 25 Year BA. Spokane City Dispatchers (unlike their police officers) rank high, coming in 7th place at 5 year and 11th at 25-year BA. Valley Comm is ranked 2nd at both the 5 Year and 25 Year BA. Port of Seattle is 4th at the 5 year no degree wage but jumps to top position for the 25-year BA wage. NORCOM continues as a major player in the wage ranking coming in 5th at 5 year no degree and 25-year BA. The top 10 dispatcher wages at the 5-year level are listed below.
The Records Clerk data continues to reveal some unusual rankings. Medina is not on the high end of population and yet it second-highest records clerk wage on our lists. Renton, historically high is now ranked 10th at 5 Year and 2nd at 25 Year BA. Some smaller cities surprisingly made the top 10 including Fife, Enumclaw, Snoqualmie, and Monroe. In addition to Renton, Olympia and Everett are the larger cities that made the top 10 in our ranking at the 5 Year level.
At the 25-year BA wage, Seattle records clerks actually are ranked a surprising 46th place out of the 133 records clerk positions surveyed. And King County continues as in past years to rank lower than what might be predicted at 40th, between Lake Stevens and Sedro-Woolley. Cities with the top 10 ranked 5 year no-degree wages are listed in the table 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. In those articles, we reveal how geography, size, and tax base are highly predictive of wage rankings but in the case of Seattle and King County records clerks, for example, that does not always prove to be the sole explanation. In the next article in this series, we’ll turn to a discussion about the extent to which Population is associated with wage rankings.
