How Much Does the Average Pastor Make?
And, do clergy make more money than the local school teacher?
My favorite documentary series of all time is called Last Chance U. The premise is pretty simple - it follows the trials and tribulations of one of the best junior college football programs in the country. Teams at this level have a very specific recruiting strategy - they look for kids who got scholarships to large Division 1 football programs and then got in trouble. Those kids need a place to reset, get some game film and bounce back to another big time college football team after a year of slumming it at junior college.
Hope is one of the primary themes of that show. Almost all of the athletes featured come from very rough environments. Many didn’t have a stable home life. Most would never go to college if it wasn’t for the opportunities provided to them by football. For the vast majority, this is their last chance to break the cycle that trapped their parents and grandparents in poverty and despair.
The most compelling figure in the first two seasons is the academic advisor for the football program at East Mississippi Community College, Brittany Wagner. She really wants these kids to succeed and she has seen hundreds come through her doors in her time at EMCC. She once said,
I worked at arguably the best junior college football program in the country where I advised at least 400 athletes during my 8 years there. 98% of those 400 thought they were going to the NFL. Twelve out of those 400 had a real shot at making an NFL roster. 6 to 8 actually made a roster. Out of those eight, two of them have made enough money playing football to live the rest of their lives
But, here's what hope does to the next 400 kids who play for EMCC - they think that they are going to be one of those two who makes a living in the NFL.
I think this story illustrates an underlying problem that folks have when thinking about data. Our imagination is always captured by the outlier. A kid who goes to EMCC for two seasons, gets a scholarship to a Division 2 school and has an unspectacular career there is quickly forgotten. The guy who goes to a Power Five school and ends up playing five years in the NFL will be remembered forever.
When outsiders think about religious leaders, the image they conjure in their heads is the All-Star, not the average Joe. They think of the preacher that has a weekly television program like Joel Osteen or T.D. Jakes. They don’t think of the guy who has shepherded the little Presbyterian church down the road for the last three decades. I’m here to tell you that almost no one is getting rich by being a pastor. Just the opposite, really.
So, let me reiterate that point with the data. It comes from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They have been tracking the median salary of clergy for at least the last 25 years and they make that data publicly available for download. The BLS accomplishes this task by just surveying folks. Here’s the median clergy salary for the United States in May of 2022 broken down to the state level.
How does the BLS define salary? This website provides that information.
Wages include only the following items:
Base rates
Commissions
Cost-of-living allowances
Deadheading pay
Guaranteed pay
Hazard pay
Incentive pay
Longevity pay
Over-the-road pay (Mileage)
Piece rates
Portal-to-portal rates
Production bonuses
Tips
