By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is Part 5 of our 2023 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 [link to description of website on our free 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 2023 Ranking
Firefighter 25 Year BA 2023 Ranking
Corrections Officer 5 Year No Degree 2023 Ranking
Corrections Officer 25 Year BA 2023 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 reported include City fire departments, County Fire Districts and a growing number of Regional Fire Authorities. For fire contracts, the reported 25-year wages include longevity premiums and the less commonly provided education premiums.
Firefighters work 24-hour shifts (or on occasion 12-hour shifts) and, in any case substantially more than 2080 hours annually which is standard for other public safety occupations. For this reason, Cline and Associates provides Firefighter wages on a net hourly basis instead of the monthly salary. Under the net hourly wage analysis, holiday and vacation leave hours are subtracted from annual hours and these are divided by the annual work hours for the net hourly wage. Often this includes adding or subtracting “Kelly Day,” “Debit Days,” or other hours offsets. For this reason, if the work schedule and annual hours of work are modified the hourly wage is impacted.
We are reporting the following net hourly wage ranking as the “Top 10” for Washington Firefighters:
- The highest paid agencies are clustered in or near King County.
- At the 5 Year no degree level, the top 10 include three King County Fire Districts including King County Fire District 4, 10 and 20.
- Snohomish South County and Renton Regional Fire Districts climb into the top 10 at the 25 Year BA level.
- Tacoma and Vancouver move out of the top 10 at the 25 Year BA level to 12th and 13th place.
Again, Because the hours of actual 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:
- South Correctional (SCORE) tops the 5 Year and King County tops the 25 Year BA list. Marysville comes in 10th at 5 Year and moves up to 6th at the 25 Year BA.
- The top 10 ranked at 25 Years BA have 6 counties (Clark, King, Pierce, San Juan, Snohomish and Skagit Counties) and three cities including Marysville, Kent, and Lynnwood as well as SCORE.
- With its seven member cities SCORE is sized larger than many counties. The 5 Year no degree Corrections Officer top 10 wage ranks are listed below.
It should be noted that some of these agencies launched into the top 10 after employers voluntarily reopened the contract to make it more competitive. As we’ve discussed, the high-CPI, competitive labor market environment has dramatically impacted wages. Our more recent public safety surveys are showing an unusual degree of movement up and down the list
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 subject, in the next article of this series, we’ll finish our ranking with Dispatchers and Records Clerks.
