The state of staff: NCSL's survey finds that after growth in the '70s and '80s, the number of legislative staff has leveled off.

• Author: Kurtz, Karl

Legislative staff are the unsung workhorses of the capitol. They are seldom studied, and many believe they are inadequately appreciated.

So, the National Conference of State Legislatures conducted a new study that counted the number of staff employed by the 50 state legislatures, looked at how that number has changed over 30 years, and found out more about their characteristics. Key findings include:

* After rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s, the number of legislative staff has leveled off in the 1990s and 2000s.

* Personal staff to members make up a larger share of all staff than was previously known.

* Staff jobs are dominated by whites; racial and ethnic minorities are under-represented.

* Women are well-represented among all staff but not in managerial ranks.

* The vast majority of legislative staff view their work as a long-term career.

* The top worry among managers is replacing senior staff planning to retire. When NCSL did its first count of staff in 1979, legislatures were riding the big wave of reform and many were adding staff fast and sometimes furiously. Overall staff numbers peaked in NCSL's 1996 census. Since then, growth has stopped and the curve has flattened out.

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DIFFERENCES AMONG STATES

All legislatures are not equal when it comes to staff numbers. Pennsylvania and New York continue to dominate the top two spots with nearly 3,000 staff in each legislature. At the other end of the spectrum is Vermont, with less than 100 staff during session. Many factors explain these differences, including state population and demographics, size of legislative districts, the size and complexity of state government, economic conditions, partisan competition and legislative tradition.

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Vermont is the only legislature that has fewer than 100 staff. Both Dakotas employ a little more than 100 each, with Wyoming and Delaware coming in at 125 each.

Leaving out staff employed only during the session, North Dakota now claims the title, long held by Wyoming, for the smallest year-round, permanent staff with 32. Wyoming is now up to 39 permanent employees, most the result of adding a research office and a public relations function.

Most states rely primarily on their year-round, full-time permanent staff for support. However, five state--Hawaii, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina and Virginia--each hire more than 300 temporary staff for the session only. The employment of session-only staff has declined since 1979, when they represented more than 37 percent of all legislative employees compared to only 19 percent in 2009. This is a result of lengthening sessions in many legislatures, busier interim schedules and the conversion of session-only positions into permanent ones.

THE PARTISAN PERCENTAGE

The balance of partisan and nonpartisan staff has not changed significantly since 2003, another sign that legislative staffing has entered an era of stability. Partisan staff make up the majority of staff in about half the states, but in about a quarter of the states, mostly the smallest ones, all but a very few of them are nonpartisan.

The 2009 data provide a first-ever look at personal staff, defined as employees who work directly for a legislator in his or...