Alex Lundry

The White House, as required by federal law, has released their annual report to Congress on the salaries of White House staffers.  For the second time, this data has been released as a downloadable, machine readable CSV file.  Because of this I was able to link it back to the previous year’s data.  This means we can see who got raises and promotions.  Here’s a very quick data dump of what I found:

• The average (mean) White House raise was about $5,000.
• The median salary increase was $1,753 (50% of raises were above this number and 50% were below it).
• 84 of the 329 people (26%) that worked in the White House in both 2009 and 2010 received no raise at all.
• 93 of the 329 people (29%) that worked in the White House in both 2009 and 2010 received promotions (changed their title/position).
• 2 people actually made LESS this year than last year: Diana Beinart’s salary fell about $2,500 to $132,914 when she switched positions from Tax Counsel to Special Assistant to the President & Associate Counsel to the President.  And Anand Chhabra took an $8,000 hit when he moved from Senior Writer for Proclamations to Staff Assistant.
• Margaret McLaughlin wins the prize for biggest raise at $40,000.  She jumped from making $80,000 as Director of Operations to $120,000 as the Special Assistant to the President and Chief of Staff for Presidential Personnel. 
• The highest raises that came without a promotion (no change in job title) went to two presidential speechwriters: Cody Keenan and Jonathon Lovett who both enjoyed raises of $30,000 from a 2009 salary of $45,000 to a 2010 salary of $75,000.