New report: Who’s on the Hill?

On Capitol Hill, any issue area expertise in committee offices largely stems from the staffers who support each committees’ operations. After all, committee work is only one component of a member’s job description; for committee aides, their panel’s jurisdiction constitutes the bulk of their duties.

Because of this, conventional wisdom suggests that committee aides are generally the most substantively knowledgeable, most tenured and best compensated on the Hill.

These conventional wisdoms are largely true. But, are they true across committees, across time, across gender and across chambers? The short answer is: it depends.

To help answer these questions, we developed a database of each of the congressional aides who have served on any of the House and Senate committees since 2001. Using a mix of authoritative data sources, including raw compensation data from LegiStorm.com, we have preliminary answers to many pressing congressional committee capacity questions such as:

• Which committees receive the most money to do their work? How do individual committee authorizations vary over time?
• Which committees’ aides have the longest congressional tenures? What about the shortest?
• Which committees retain their staffs the longest?
• Which committees have the best gender parity, particularly with more senior, higher-paying positions?
• What are the average salaries across committees? Does a professional staff member, for example, make more, on average, on certain committees or within a certain chamber?
• What are the pay gaps between men and women on each congressional committee?
• On which committees do the highest number of lobbyists serve?

To learn the answers to these questions (and a whole lot more!), read the full report here.