Museum Salaries: big earners make it hard for everyone else

As our salary survey moves into its 4th week live, we are very grateful to everyone who has participated, and yet honestly flummoxed as to why we only have ~65 responses so far.

Here’s a newsflash: the only salaries people outside the sector hear about are the top earners, thanks to the 990 forms and a bunch of journalists who like to post stories along the lines of “Look how much this museum director makes to play with old stuff and art all day!” *** And many people who hear about these top salaries get some strange idea in their heads that museums have endless funds and everyone makes a bundle. (Some interesting posts related to this idea are found on CultureGrrrl’s blog here, here, and here. More recently, and even more infuriatingly, here)

The only way to combat these misconceptions is to basically reveal the museum worker as underpaid, yet talented and educated. There is an element of needing public awareness and sympathy. Museos! We need to make the public aware that what we do is worth more. We need to make each other within the museum community aware that We Are Not Alone in our feelings of injustice about compensation, and that we are all experiencing the same problems.

This article (thanks to Pete of Newcurator for the heads up) discusses the idea of a lottery economy, one in which who “wins” is complete chance. This idea applies to museos because it often seems that the people who get positions and the amount of pay is all down to chance. The quote, “people don't believe that people that win in gambling deserve their fortune,” would then extend to us asking ourselves: do we, the underpaid or unable-to-find-a-job, think the people who got the job just “lucked” into it? Do we resent our fellow museos for making more? Do we resent top earners?

Or do we resent ourselves for not demanding better?

I promise, we at Museos Unite have a plan (albeit one that takes lots of help to enact, YOUR help) to try to revolutionize museum salaries. But first, we need the numbers to back us up. Share the survey!

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*** We made a post here about how much Directors are making, but only to illustrate the gap between top earners and entry level/lower pay grade positions. We know that Directors work hard!

And our ranks will grow…

Kirsten hinted in her last post that I had some fun data to share. Well, I am not quite finished, but it is interesting even in these early stages.

I was wondering how many people graduate each year with a museum studies degree vs. how many entry level jobs come out a year. I think that the supply-demand relationship may be one of the biggest hurdles to our overcoming the much-too-little pay scenario.

So, first, I present the data for the USA, since degree types are delineated so clearly by the very useful National Center for Education Statistics. Data is for 1992-2007 graduation years, as that is what is available.

If it is hard to see, please comment and I will post again elsewhere.

Basically, in 1992 we had 67 grads, in 2007 we had 226. Mind you, this only counts degrees awarded in the USA, not including US citizens who got Museo degrees abroad. It also does not include people who got related degrees, it is just “Museum Studies.” No offence, I am just trying to illustrate a point.

So I am not going to do any fancy statistical analysis on this baby, mostly because I cannot for the life of me remember how to do a chi square test. I leave that up to my more sophisticated readers. What I will say is that I did a quasi statistical thing and put in the trendlines for the data, one being linear and one being exponential.

At the rate we are going, if we assume linear growth, in 10 years from this data (2017) there will be 319 degrees awarded that year. (If you want to assume exponential growth, there would be 468 degrees awarded. I am going to avoid assuming exponential growth because that seems impossible.)

I wish I had data on how many of 2007’s 226 grads are gainfully employed in musuems. I don’t. All I know is, in 2008 AND in 2009, there were probably another ~230 Museos per year added to the pack. That means 460 more on top of the 2180 Museos shown on that graph above that represents 16 years.

Approx. 2,640 Museos added to the job market since 1992, joining in the competition with thousands of non-Museum-Studies grads, long-time volunteers and interns, and career-changers for the same jobs.

With that number in front of you, is it any wonder that museums can get away with offering $20,000/yr salaries at this point?

Love What You Do AND Get Paid!

I don’t like when “but if you love what you’re doing, isn’t it all worth it?” is used as a defense of (or at least a dismissal of) low wages. You’re not saying it in so many words, but what you’re implying is “You don’t love museums enough. You don’t love them as much as I do.” As far as I’m concerned no one’s enthusiasm for their chosen career is in question here. You can be an extremely passionate, talented artist, but that doesn’t mean your art is going to pay the bills. Fortunately for these “starving artist” types art can be done at any hour of the day, and they can still get 9-5 jobs to pay the bills. Museos do not have this option. Museum work has to be done during the normal 9-5 work day. Sometimes (often) it goes longer than that, but that doesn’t make the hours flexible. It doesn’t mean you can do museum work fueled entirely by passion and talent. That 9-5 job (museums) has to pay the bills. It has to. There isn’t another option.

Museum workers are people, not just cogs in the museum machine. Passion is important. No one has claimed it isn’t, but passion doesn’t put food on the table or pay the rent. Arguing for more passion amongst museum workers is, from what I’ve seen, like saying we need more love of food amongst chefs, or that librarians should be a bit more enthusiastic about books. People are passionate. That isn’t what the problem is. Stop dismissing the problem on those terms.

One solution (or at least stop-gap) for the salary problem is that organizations that post job listings can take a stand and refuse to list jobs below a certain salary threshold. I believe the University of Leicester Jobs Desk did this several years ago when the national museums in the UK were offering very low starting wages. If jobs clearinghouses worked this into their stated policies perhaps there would be less of an inclination to stiff employees. Or perhaps more employers would try to get around it by not listing a salary. What do you think?