Compensation & Benefits Study, 2022

The Association of Reform Jewish Educators (ARJE) selected Association Research, Inc., to conduct its 2022 Compensation and Benefits Survey as a follow-up to similar surveys ARJE conducted in 2020 and 2013/2014. The 2022 survey was streamlined with the purpose of continuing to assess trends in Reform Jewish educators’ compensation and benefits. All questions are broken out by various respondent characteristics such as primary work setting, job title/role for those with a primary work setting of congregation or community part-time school, gender, years of experience in a supervisory or managerial level position in Jewish education, ordained rabbi or cantor, and region. Compensation data for Educators of Lifelong Learning or Senior Level Professionals are reported using some additional breakouts, including highest level of education, congregation size (number of households), program/school/department number of full time employees, and other more detailed location breakouts.

In early November 2022, a link to the online survey was emailed to 543 ARJE members; multiple weekly reminders were also sent to those who had not yet completed their surveys. ARJE provided additional outreach to ensure maximum participation. ARJE members were asked to remove themselves from the panel if they were not working in a supervisory or managerial position in Jewish education, and based on this exercise, the sample surveyed was 438. In total, 241 surveys were submitted—an overall response rate of 55.0%. The number of responses received enables reliable and valid characterization of compensation and benefits for Reform Jewish educators of lifelong learning or senior level professionals in the United States. Almost all responses were received from locations in the United States; 5 responses were from Canada.

Many of the graphs report median values along with the mean (average) values. The median salary is the value that is in the middle of all of the salaries, sorted from lowest to highest—higher than half of all salaries in the category and lower than half of the salaries. The mean, or simple average, is the total of all salaries divided by the number of individuals reporting. The mean value can be distorted by unusually high or unusually low numbers. The median is not influenced by extreme values.

Another statistic used in the report is the quartile. This statistic is similar to a median in that it is the salary that divides all salaries into two groups: one group containing 25 percent of the salaries and the other group containing the remaining 75 percent. The first quartile, therefore, is that salary that is higher than 25 percent of the salaries but lower than the remaining 75 percent. Similarly, the third quartile is that salary figure that is higher than 75 percent of the other salaries presented. It should be noted that to protect confidentiality, medians and quartiles are only presented when four or more individuals are included in a particular category, and the mean value is presented for three or more individuals. Additionally, all data for a few categories (Adult Educator, Day School and Self-employed/Consultant/Coach) with a total of only one or two respondents overall were removed from the tables in the appendix to protect confidentiality.

Base salary excludes benefits and represents the annual salary for the respondents’ primary position in Jewish education. While pay for part-time individuals was collected, there were not enough part-time respondents to share this data. Salaries referenced in this report are for full-time employees who provided a salary, and most salary data reported is for those who are educators of lifelong learning or senior level professionals employed by congregations.