For the second year, New Working Majority has run a salary satisfaction survey for organizers and other staff working in progressive movement organizations. As a recruitment firm, we are committed to increasing salary transparency within our movement and we provide this survey data so that organizers–and hiring managers–everywhere can better understand salary trends in movement work.

This year’s report leans heavily on quantitative data, as we found fewer people who were willing to participate in follow-up surveys than we did last year. We launched our survey requests after the survey closed at the end of June, and unfortunately the time period allotted for survey follow-ups coincided with some pretty spectacularly unprecedented weeks in modern US political history. We are hopeful that when we send out requests next year, more organizers will be able to talk to us about their survey responses, but we certainly understand that people had more urgent concerns this summer. 

In constructing this year’s survey, we added two new focal points for both quantitative and qualitative questions–these concerned the impact of unionization efforts at movement organizations, and also respondents’ experience with mentors in their careers. Of the people who took this year’s survey, only 23% reported having a union at their workplace, and only 29% reported that they had a mentor. 

The total number of surveys taken this year was 258, with 256 surveys completed in English and 2 in Spanish. The majority of our sample (85%) were between the ages of 23-42 years old. A slight majority (51%) were white, and 60% of the respondents identified as women. Nearly 80% of our respondents reported that they now earn at least $60,000 per year.

New Working Majority classifies respondents based on their years of experience doing paid movement work as follows:

Novice (1st year of paid movement work)

Apprentice (Years 2-5 of paid movement work)

Journeyperson (Years 6-15 of movement work)

Adept (Years 16+ of movement work)