Out of more than 7,300 state legislators in the country, 116 — or 1.6 percent of the total — currently or last worked in manual labor, the service industry, or in clerical or union jobs, according to a recent study conducted by Nicholas Carnes and Eric Hansen, who are political scientists at Duke University and Loyola University Chicago. By contrast, about 50 percent of all U.S. workers hold jobs in one of those fields.
This problem afflicts both parties. In the last legislative session, the study found, 1 percent of Republican lawmakers and 2 percent of Democratic lawmakers had working-class backgrounds. In 10 states — Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah and Virginia — not a single state lawmaker works or has recently worked in an occupation that researchers would define as working class. Three of those states, incidentally, are ones in which lawmakers have recently loosened rules on child labor.
What explains the almost total absence of working-class people from elected positions in state government? It may have something to do with how we structure our legislatures. Let’s look at Congress as a baseline. Both the House and Senate are full-time legislatures with considerable staff and resources at their disposal. Members work through the year and are paid accordingly: $174,000 per annum with pay increases for those in leadership positions.
Now there is a case to make that Congress needs more staff and higher pay — that to attract the best candidates for federal office, compensation should be competitive with salaries in private-sector fields of similar power, prestige and responsibility. The main point, however, is that Congress is at least structured in a way that would make it possible for a working-class person to do the job without jeopardizing his or her financial security (although this still leaves us with the problem of actually winning a seat).
You cannot say the same for most of our state legislatures. According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, only 10 states have full-time state legislatures, in which lawmakers spent at least 84 percent of their time engaged in the position, from time spent on the legislative floor to time spent in hearings, committee meetings and on constituent service. They are paid full-time salaries as well, with average compensation of about $82,000. On the other end, there are 14 states where the job is essentially part-time and lawmakers are paid accordingly, earning an average salary of just over $18,000. The remaining states are classified as hybrid legislatures, in which lawmakers devote about 74 percent of their time to legislative duties, with an average salary of around $41,000.