The Advance for HIM 2007 Salary Survey [1] results are in and of course, I have something to say about the results.

I want to be Dr. House's MT. I'll bet it pays better than a real MT job. I could go from saying "I'm not a doctor but I know a lot of them," to "I'm not an MT but I play one on TV." How cool would that be?

Actually, pretty cool. Because according to the survey, MTs makes an average of $107 per day. As a SAG union extra (excuse me - background actor), I'd make $130 a day, get fed meals while I was there and be eligible for healthcare at MPTV. I actually had a friend who left MT to do this. She loved it. Principle actors get $759 a day, plus meals and healthcare through MPTV. At that rate, I'd only have to work 36 days a year to make as much as I would as an MT. Hey - I could totally go for that!

First of all, the Advance survey isn't conducted by any scientific means, so the data should be taken with a grain of salt. I do believe, however, that it gives a fairly good general overview of where pay scales are at for MTs.

As an example of how the results are skewed, there's a huge pay differential for MTs with credentials, but in my experience most credentialed MTs are working in management or QA positions, not as production MT. It's possible there were no more appropriate (and accurate) options and so the respondent took the one that best fit (MT). When the pay differential for a credential is usually less than 1 cpl (at the few companies that offer it), I have difficulty believing that adds up to an average $10,000/year difference in pay. At 200 lph, a full-time MT would only make approximately an additional $4,000 per year at 1 cpl pay differential for a credential. Factor in that very few companies offer any differential at all and it adds up even less. Every respondent would have to be working for a company that paid over 2 cpl differential for the credential AND be producing at least 200 lph. The $10K difference just doesn’t add up for someone who is doing production MT.

The survey also doesn’t account for hours worked and in an environment where pay is based on production, like MT, that’s important. We have no way of knowing whether the average salary is for full time or part time or overtime. I know MTs who work 6 and 7 days a week and are highly productive. I know other MTs who work 6 and 7 days a week and aren’t. It’s impossible to get accurate information from this survey.

Although almost half of the total respondents were in hospital/acute care settings, we don’t know how many of those were MT. The next-largest group of respondents indicated they work in home-based offices. The survey doesn’t break down respondents by group so there’s no way of knowing what percentage of respondents were MTs, much less how many MTs were in each of the groups by location. I assume the majority of MTs are home-based, but I have no figures to back that up, only my experience.

Although the majority of MTs are paid on a per-line rate, the salary survey asks for annual figures. Lines and lines per hour and pay per line aren’t taken into consideration, yet that’s how most MTs are paid. And any experienced MT will tell you that $0.XX per line at company A is not the same as $0.ZZ at company B because there may be barriers to productivity that make a lower line rate at company A more profitable than the higher line rate paid by company B.

What I can say, however, is that the survey has been conducted in basically the same manner every year so the results of the survey should be comparable to the surveys from prior years. And the 2007 salary survey results are still reflecting a pay rate that is below that of 2004.

In 1982, I was making $28,000 a year as a secretary/administrative assistant. According to Payscale.com, if I had stayed with that job, I could expect to make about $41K a year now in that position. The numbers themselves aren’t as important as what they reflect – an actual increase over the years. Which we don’t see in MT. In 1987, 20 years ago, I was being paid 9 cpl gross lines to work as an independent contractor. Most MTs now would tell you that 9 cpl is a good pay rate for a 65-character line as an independent contractor (employees typically get less), and that’s at least a 35% decrease in pay from a gross line. In 1986, I did pickup, delivery and printing. In 2007, most MTs aren’t doing that. However, they have taken a cut in pay of 35% and I have to ask – is pickup, delivery and printing worth 35%? On top of zero COL increase? Somehow, I don’t think so. Technology has made us more productive, but the productivity increase doesn’t offset the stagnant and/or reduced rates, the years of working without any COL increase and the cost of the technology itself.

We keep getting told that to make more money, all we have to do is produce more lines. The fallacy of that thought process just burns me up. First, the more experienced MTs – the ones we keep getting told are more valuable – are also aging MTs. There is no option to produce more lines per hour when a person physically isn’t able to sit in a chair and pound out the lines like they did 10, 15 or 20 years ago. Second, it doesn’t even factor in the work slowdowns, companies that overhire and have no work available, and platforms that inhibit productivity. I wonder how many workers get told they have to come to work but if there is nothing to do because the company overhired, they won’t get paid, yet it happens on a daily basis in the MT world. And yet – MTs are supposed to produce more to get a pay increase, which they haven’t seen for over 20 years.

You have to be intelligent to be an MT. When I look at these salary surveys and the conditions MTs work in, I wonder why we’re still here. We’re too smart for this.