Wages in the nonprofit and private sectors, 2007

The nonprofit sector has expanded in terms of number of organizations and number of paid employees. In 1994, there were more than 1.1 million nonprofit organizations in the United States, employing about 5.4 million people, or 4.4 percent of all workers. By 2007, nonprofits employed 8.7 million workers, or 5.9 percent of all workers.

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A recent BLS analysis compared wages in 2007 in the nonprofit sector with private industry as a whole, and also with State and local governments. Among the findings:

• Overall, full-time workers had higher hourly wages in nonprofits than in private industry as a whole.
• Managers in nonprofit organizations earned wages that were lower on average than managers in all private industry.
• Nonprofit workers in office and administrative support occupations had very similar wages to their counterparts in all private industry.

These data are from the BLS National Compensation Survey program. To learn more, see Wages in the Nonprofit Sector: Management, Professional, and Administrative Support Occupations, by Amy Butler, Compensation and Working Conditions Online, October 2008. (Note: This Editor’s Desk article was revised April 21, 2009 after the CWC Online article it is based on was updated to correct private industry data.)