By Jim Cline and Kate Kremer
This is part of our continued series on Washington public safety employee wages. In this issue we report on the current wage rankings for 911 dispatchers and police records clerks.
In this article we have a brief discussion of the wage rankings but for the 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 Dispatcher and Records Clerk Wage Rank reports:
Dispatcher 5 Year No Degree 2023 Ranking
Dispatcher 25 Year BA 2023 Ranking
Records Clerks 5 Year No Degree 2023 Ranking
Records Clerk 25 Year BA 2023 Ranking
Dispatch Wages
The Cline and Associates Dispatcher survey includes 54 cities, counties and regional 911 agencies. Much of the 911 has migrated away from cities and counties toward regional centers.
Four Regional communications centers, the Port of Seattle, three cities and two counties made the top 10 at the 5 Year level. Among the highlights of current wages:
- Seattle’s lagging 2021 wage came in at #7 at the 5 Year level but did not make the top ten 25 Year BA list.
- King and Kitsap are on both the top ten lists with Kitsap jumping to the top position at 25 BA and King dropping slightly from 5th at the 5-year level to 7th at 25 BA.
- Spokane City Dispatchers (unlike their police officers) rank high, coming in 22nd place at 5 year and 6th at 25-year BA.
- Valley Com is ranked first at the 5 Year and 4th at 25 Year BA.
- Port of Seattle is 4th at the 5 year no degree wage but jumps to second for the 25-year BA wage.
- NORCOM continues as a major player in the wage ranking coming in 8th at 5 year no degree and10th at 25-year BA.
The top 10 dispatcher wages at the 5-year level are listed below.
Records Clerk Wages
The Records Clerk data continues to reveal some unusual rankings. In contrast with other public safety groups where size strongly correlates with wages, we found that many smaller agencies outpaced larger cities and counties. Among some key points in the data:
- Medina is not on the high end of population and yet it is 5th and 6th respectively on the 5 year and 25-year BA lists.
- Renton continues its historically high ranking at 4th at 5 Year and 3rd at 25 Year BA.
- Some smaller cities made the top 10 at the 5-year level including Medina, Monroe, and Sumner.
- At the 25-year BA level several additional small cities made the top 10 including Fife and Ridgefield. At the 25-year BA wage Seattle records clerks actually are ranked a surprising 60th place out of the 131 records clerk positions surveyed.
- King County continues as in past years to rank much lower than what might be predicted by its size, at 37th, between Washougal and Brier.
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 which 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 as we see here in the case of Seattle and King County records clerks, population alone 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.
