Pelosi announces $45,000 minimum salary for House staffers

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Friday announced that the House will now require staffers to get paid a minimum salary of $45,000.

“I am pleased to announce that, pursuant to the statutory authority of the Speaker in 2 U.S.C. 4532, the House will for the first time ever set the minimum annual pay for staff at $45,000,” Pelosi wrote in a “Dear Colleague” letter, first reported by Punchbowl News.

House lawmakers will have until Sept. 1 to enact the new salary change. Pelosi said the maximum House staffer pay was also bumped up to $203,700 to match the Senate.

Pelosi said that a 21 percent raise in members’ Representational Allowance in March “will more than cover this pay adjustment.”

“With a competitive minimum salary, the House will better be able to retain and recruit excellent, diverse talent. Doing so will open the doors to public service for those who may not have been able to afford to do so in the past,” Pelosi wrote.

“This is also an issue of fairness, as many of the youngest staffers working the longest hours often earn the lowest salaries.”

Previously, there was no salary floor in Congress, with some staffers being paid as low as $30,000.

Demand Progress, a nongovernmental organization that has pushed for higher staffer pay, celebrated the action by Pelosi on Friday, calling it “a proud moment in congressional history.”

“If all goes as planned, by the end of next week this House will be on track to improve the working conditions for its staff in the 117th Congress than Congress has over the last three decades combined,” the group stated.

Pelosi noted these measures come before the House is set to pass a bill next week that will formally recognize the right of congressional staffers to unionize.

Updated at 8:53 a.m.