ARL: Library Salaries Showing Growth

-- Library Journal, 8/9/2005

The growth in librarian salaries outpaced inflation once again in 2004-2005, according to the recently Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Annual Salary Survey. Overall, the survey found the median salary for U.S. and Canadian ARL university libraries rose to $55,250, up a healthy a 4.2 percent, higher than the combined 2003-04 rate of increase (2.6 percent), and comfortably ahead of the U.S. Consumer Price Index (3 percent) as well as inflation in Canada (2.3 percent). The survey was drawn from a total of 9,487 professional staff positions from the 113 ARL university libraries, including law and medical libraries, and 3,946 staff members for ARL’s 10 non-university libraries. Of those positions, 8,581 are in U.S. institutions, and 906 are in Canadian institutions.

But don’t call it a comeback--at least not yet. Despite the overall increase, the rate of increase for beginning salaries dipped slightly, to 2.73 percent. According to Mark Young, ARL research assistant for statistics & measurement, the median beginning salary increases, which showed some “sharp jumps in the late 1990s and early 2000s,” increased by $984 in 2004-05, to $36,984. Beginning salaries had increased by more than $1000 in each of the previous two surveys. Also notable: the gap between salaries at private university libraries and at public university libraries narrowed for the first time in several years, to 5.9 percent.