[lbo-talk] 15% of the Population, 2 Hours per Weekend, (was Development of Political Underdevelopment)

Miles Jackson cqmv at pdx.edu
Tue Mar 27 08:31:04 PDT 2007


Tim Francis-Wright wrote:
> Doug Henwood wrote:
>
>> On Mar 27, 2007, at 12:16 AM, Miles Jackson wrote:
>>
>>> I wholeheartedly agree that kindergarten teachers are woefully
>>> underpaid. However, keep in mind that the data you provided are about
>>> full-time professors in higher education.
>>>
>> No, it's the median pay of all workers in the occupational categories.
>>
>
> I think that it is not so clear. The BLS tables attempt to gross-up
> salaries
> to full-time hours, e.g.
> <http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes251021.htm>
>
> 2) Annual wages have been calculated by multiplying the hourly mean
> wage by a "year-round, full-time" hours figure of 2,080 hours; for
> those occupations where there is not an hourly mean wage published,
> the annual wage has been directly calculated from the reported survey
> data.
>
> I would love to know how part-time adjuncts are treated here; I suspect
> that the BLS imputes an hourly wage.
>
> --tim francis-wright
>
>
This is a 260-day work year. No part-time faculty are able to work this many days in a year, even if they teach in the summer. Because BLS has to track so many different types of jobs, they're using generic estimates that significantly misrepresent what's going on with faculty in higher education. From my union work and state-level data, I can tell you what's going on in Washington State: median salaries for tenured professors in universities and 4-year colleges is around $75,000, and annualized PT salary is around $25,000. As I understand it, this is the typical pattern.

Miles



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