Black Mountain Software Creates Infographic to Share City Clerk Salary Findings
Polson, MT (PRWEB) July 16, 2013 -- When Black Mountain Software's blog readers and more than 700 members of the company's City Clerk Café LinkedIn Group were asked to participate in an anonymous city clerk salary survey, they jumped at the chance to share. "Clerks wanted to provide input for our effort to try to assemble an accurate picture of the pay scale and demographics of city clerks," explained Darlis Smith, Marketing Manager at Black Mountain Software. "We are interested because that challenging and important profession is at the heart of our customer base." What the company found was very interesting - enough so that they created an infographic based on the findings.
What didn’t surprise Black Mountain Software:
• City clerks have girl power. Eighty percent of respondents were female.
• City clerks remember the days of bell bottoms. A whopping 80 percent of survey respondents were over age 40.
• City clerks are smart cookies. A college degree backs 65 percent of city clerks surveyed.
What surprised Black Mountain Software was the unpredictability of salaries based on factors that typically impact pay in many professions. For example:
• Despite a small differentiation in age (which usually correlates to number of years on the job), salaries among city clerks were vastly different. Sixty-five percent of respondents fit into a wide salary calculation of $30-$75,000 per year.
• Bigger cities have bigger budgets and a higher cost of living - but not necessarily bigger salaries. The salary gap for city clerks wasn’t as large as might be expected among small to medium-sized towns. The average city clerk in a town of less than 5,000 can be expected to make $30 – $60,000 per year, and the salary range of their counterparts in cities of 5,000-25,000 people overlaps quite a bit with those smaller towns.
• Clerk education is relevant, but not definitive. Even though 65 percent of clerks have a college degree, there was little difference in pay among the degree-ed versus non-degree-ed clerks.
• Less experienced clerks are gaining ground on salaries. Gone are the days where seniority was the only wage determinant for a government worker. Clerks with less than five years of experience can make up to $60,000/year, which rivals the salaries of those with five to 15 years experience or more.
Smith says Black Mountain is happy with the survey outcome despite the results painting a somewhat volatile picture. "The reality seems to be," she stated, "that city clerk salaries vary greatly, and are only somewhat dependent on city size, education, and experience. This suggests that the mixed bag of skills and capabilities a clerk has to offer a city has the potential to significantly impact where his or her salary will fall in the broad pay range."
Black Mountain suspects that super capable, efficient clerks who have technology skills like those acquired while working with Black Mountain's government accounting, payroll, and utility billing software are likely to shine at their jobs - and have a little more bling in their paycheck as well.
The infographic and more survey results are available on the company's blog. Black Mountain Software provides robust fund accounting software and utility billing software to increase clerk happiness and office efficiency in over 500 municipalities, special districts, and schools in 24 states.
Darlis Smith, Black Mountain Software, http://www.blackmountainsoftware.com, 406-888-6005, [email protected]
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