From the article:
The White House's salary budget contracted only slightly, from $38.8 million to $37.1 million, largely because the number of staffers fell. The average salary also dropped from $82,721, to $81,765.
Staff has been cut, overall average salaries fell, and budget has been cut by $1.7M. This is a problem?
Remaining staffers are probably doing more work than before, shouldn't they get paid more?
Nowhere did the article say when the last raise occurred.
Perhaps you missed the beginning, middle and end of the report.
Of the 270 White House staffers who have been there for more than a year, 146—or 54 percent—received raises,
according to Gawker. The average salary increase was 8 percent. If you look at only staffers who got raises, the average increase was twice that.
"That's a much bigger raise than the average white-collar worker got. According to a survey conducted last year by the human resources consulting firm Mercer, most firms were projecting a 3 percent increase in base pay for executives. White House workers did nearly
three times as well...
But the across-the-board freeze didn't take effect until January 1, 2011, so the most recent report (which goes back to July 2010) features some eye-opening raises, like special assistant to the president for economic policy Matthew Vogel's $59,000, 82 percent raise to an annual salary of $130,500, or director of African American media Kevin Lewis' $36,000, 86 percent pay hike, Gawker reports.
