A major national study of clergy compensation shows increased income and declining work week for many pastors.
DAVID BRIGGS
Association of Religion Data Archives
The wages of battling sin are getting better for men and women of the cloth.
Non-Catholic clergy have experienced significant increases in income even as their work weeks declined by more than 15 percent in recent decades, according to a major new study of clergy compensation.
Overall, in inflation-adjusted wages, non-Catholic clergy made $4.37 more per hour in 2013 than they did in 1983. That figure is more than double the wage increase of the average worker with a college degree.
Like most everyone else in this age of increasing economic inequality, clergy are continuing to fall financially behind other elite professions such as doctors, lawyers and hedge fund managers, the study found.
But the price of their calling is declining along with the wage gap that separates them from other college-educated Americans, according to the study following Current Population Survey data from 1976 to 2013.
Just how much? The study found clergy are gaining ground financially faster than more than nine in 10 Americans with college degrees.
The study is believed to be the first to address what had been a particular difficulty in comparing wages of clergy by taking into account the benefits they receive in the form of housing allowances or living in church-provided residences.
Not everyone is better off.
Last Updated on January 11, 2023