T_R_Oglodyte
TUG Lifetime Member
Per Benjamin Disreali - there are lies, damn lies, and statistics.
You can't really make that comparison without considering changes in the workforce and the influence of technology and changes in the workforce.
To give a microexample of how that skews. When I left college and went to work in 1974 as an Assistant Sanitary Engineer (entry level position in CA state government for someone with a MS in engineering and no work experience), I was making $1400/month (a competitive salary at the time). Meanwhile, a Clerk-Typist II (which was a basic office staff person, with five or more years of experience) was earning about $500/month.
Our business was doing inspections, reviewing reports and studies and data, and preparing permits, evaluations, and related correspondence. This is pre-Word processor days. C-Ts are banging away on IBM Selectrics and doing triplicate and quadruplicate carbon copies of final documents. The mode is to write documents out in long-hand, give it to a C-T to type, make hand-written edits to the typed documents, and hand it in for retyping. Repeat as needed until the document reaches final. Our rule of thumb was the we needed one Clerk-Typist for every three engineers in the office. If we skewed much from that we either had a highly efficient C-T or inefficient professional staff.
Move forward 25 years to 1990. I'm now working in consulting, but the nature of our work is very similar. What is different is the office environment. Everyone has a computer (PC or Mac), the office staff are using word processing software, and documents are being generated on printers. Staff now write reports on the computer instead of long-hand, do a fair amount of document cleanup before turning over the document to clerical staff.
We're still doing hand-written edits and markups, but that's happening after a document is nearing conclusion, and often when it's being edited by a work team. We now expect the word processing staff to manage document production - they handle document layout and organization, and have responsibility for document physical appeal - spacing, organization, headings, graphics layout, etc.
Our rule of thumb is now one document production person for every ten engineers. That same entry level engineer coming out of school with a MS is being hired at about $4000/month. That office staffer is earning $3000/month. So that central office staff person has gone from earning roughly 33% of the salary of an early career engineer to earning 75% of the engineers salary. And that's commensurate with the added technological requirements of the job. But we're also employing one-third as many as we did before.
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In the old 1974 days, assume on office of ten engineers. Given the range of experience and that some engineers are in a supervisory position, the total base engineering salary burden might be $20,000/month. Admin would be three C-Ts and one office manager, so a direct admin salary burden of ~$1800/month. So office staff is about 8% to 10% of total salary.
In 1990, an office with ten engineers would likely have a base salary burden of ~ $60,000/month. There would be two clerical staff - one supervisory office person and one document production person. The supervisory person is document production plus other office coordination activities. Probably totaling to about $6500/month.
So during the time clerical support represents a bigger portion of base salary burden, but the work that is being performed is at a higher level. The people doing those jobs have seen a dramatic increase in pay, to a level where a single mother with a deadbeat ex-husband can actually support a family at more than poverty level. (I have a favorite performance review story related to that aspect.) But there were proportionally fewer of those jobs available.
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Long story - but the point is that when you making comparisons across time is difficult because conditions change.
