Employee Benefits

By Mary Jo Lynch

Director, ALA Office for Research & Statistics

Since 1993, the annual questionnaire for the ALA Survey of Librarian Salaries has included a “Supplementary Questions” section to gather, for one time only, information needed to answer questions from the field about library human resources. In 2003, the questions asked about employee benefits. Twenty commonly known benefits (shown in Figure 1) were listed on the questionnaire. For each one, respondents were asked to circle one or more of the five staff categories shown in Figure 2. In reviewing the results described below, the reader must remember that this survey did not cover all libraries. Rather, the sample was restricted to academic and public libraries with at least two ALA-MLS librarians.

All 20 benefits were offered by at least some libraries. The most uncommon benefits (childcare and eldercare) were offered by 5% or fewer. Next came long-term care, which was offered by only 12%. Those benefits are not shown on the table in this article.

Results for insurance-related benefits are shown in Tables 1A&1B. Table 1A presents the results for public libraries, Table 1B covers academic libraries. In both tables, Column 1 shows the percent of respondents that do not offer the benefit at all. Column 2 shows the percent of respondents that offer the benefit to all full-time staff, both professional and support. Column 3 shows the percent of respondents who offer the benefit to all staff, full-time and part-time, professional and support. The last column, headed “Other”, shows the combined percent for a number of different combinations of the four choices (full-time, part-time, professional, support). Since those figures were always very small, it made sense to combine them.

Results for leave-related benefits are shown in Tables 2A&2B and for financial-related benefits in Tables 3A&3B. Collectively, the three table sets report results for all benefits listed on the questionnaire, except for the three rare ones noted above and one benefit that did not fit logically into any of the three tables. That benefit is “training and education,” offered by 91.8% of the public libraries: 62.4% offer it to all staff and 19.4% offer it to full-time staff only. For academic libraries, all but 11.8% offer the benefit: 29.5% offer it to all staff and 41.5% offer it to full-time staff only.

The tables in this article summarize results from 489 public libraries and 390 academic libraries. For insurance benefits (Tables 1A&1B), both public libraries and academic libraries were more likely to offer the benefits to full-time staff only, but the tendency was most evident in academic libraries. For most of the leave benefits (Tables 2A&2B), public libraries were most likely to offer them to all staff, whereas academic libraries were most likely to offer them to full-time staff only. That same pattern is evident for most of the financial benefits also (Tables 3A&3B).

Figure 1. List of Benefits

• Health insurance
• Dental insurance
• Life insurance
• Vision insurance
• Disability insurance
• Prescription insurance
• Vacation
• Sick leave
• Personal days
• Bereavement leave
• Pension
• Retirement savings
• Training & education
• Tuition reimbursement
• Credit union
• Professional memberships
• Transportation subsidies
• Child care
• Elder care
• Long-term care

Figure 2. Staff categories

Full-time Professional Staff

Part-time Professional Staff

Full-time Support Staff

Part-time Support Staff

Not Provided

Table 1A. Insurance, Public Libraries

Table 1B. Insurance, Academic Libraries

Table 2A. Leave, Public Libraries

Table 2B. Leave, Academic Libraries

Table 3A. Financial, Public Libraries

Table 3B. Financial, Academic Libraries