Calling Mark Twain

What are Governor Christie and all those taxpayers whining about? As long as you carefully select the right data points, it can be proven that teacher compensation in the State of New Jersey is actually lagging the growth in private sector pay! A report by Laura Bruno in The Daily Record points out that since 1985, the average worker in New Jersey has enjoyed a greater increase in pay than the average New Jersey teacher.

The NJEA is more than happy to cite this as evidence that efforts to curb the growth of personnel costs in the educational system are misguided.

"Teacher pay and compensation has not gotten out of control like the governor and others insist," said Steve Baker, spokesman for the teacher's union.

If only it were so simple. One counterargument is advanced by Gov. Christie's spokesman Michael Drewniak, who points out that these numbers exclude the additional benefits (healthcare, pension, etc.) earned by teachers, the inclusion of which would drastically alter the picture. 

But even if one focuses solely on the salary figures cited, the argument is a feeble one. Suppose if instead of going back twenty five years, we look back only five (perfectly reasonable given that a large proportion of property tax payers were not even in the labor force back in 1985). Suddenly, the picture is very different. The Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Cost Index shows that the annual rate of growth in private sector compensation slowed from 2.9% in mid-2005 to 1.6% for the first quarter of 2010. Teacher pay in New Jersey climbed 4.5% from 2009 to 2010 according to the report (and made similar gains in each of the past several years). Neither statistics nor experience support the claim that teacher compensation has not become a heavier burden for the taxpayers to bear.

Of course, the rate of historical increase is not really at issue here. It is the current and future rates of wage and inflation that pose a risk to the state and local fiscal situation and pressure on the homeowner tax burden, and it is those that Gov. Christie is seeking to address.

The NJEA's Baker has a statistic for that too. He claims that a proposed 2.5% cap on teacher pay hikes would "only put teachers out of synch with the private sector, which averaged 3.75 percent annual pay growth the past 10 years." 

Once again, the opponents of fiscal restraint are guilty of extrapolating from the now irrelevant experiences of the distant past. The last time private sector wage growth approached those rates was at the end of 2004 and currently, it is far below even the proposed 2.5% cap for teachers. With high unemployment and widespread economic uncertainty, it is unlikely that private sector wages will resume growing at a rapid pace anytime soon. In the meantime, funding problems on the state and local level continue to mount.