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Clergy Working Fewer Hours, Getting Paid More

Counting the cost is getting easier.

The wages of battling sin are getting better for men and women of the cloth.

Non-Catholic clergy have experienced significant increases in income even as their work weeks declined by more than 15 percent in recent decades, according to a major new study of clergy compensation published in the Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. (While the non-Catholic category was primarily Protestant, it did include a small number of non-Christian clergy, the study said.)

The study is believed to be the first to take into account the benefits clergy receive in the form of housing allowances or living in church-provided residences, which usually cause difficulty in any wage comparison of clergy to the general public.

Overall, in inflation-adjusted wages, non-Catholic clergy made $4.37 more per hour in 2013 than they did in 1983. That figure is more than double the wage increase of the average worker with a college degree.

Over the past 37 years, the average income for American workers was $49,225; non-Catholic clergy earned $46,216. Put another way, the general population averaged $21.20 an hour, while church clergy pulled in $18.85 an hour. (Clergy that worked elsewhere, like in hospitals or administration, earned $21.79 an hour.)

Like most everyone else in this age of increasing economic inequality, clergy continue to fall financially behind elite professions such as doctors, lawyers, and hedge fund managers, the study found.

But the price of their calling is declining as the wage gap that separates them from other college-educated Americans shrinks, according to the study, which used Current Population Survey data from 1976 to 2013.

Just how much? The study found clergy are gaining financial ground faster than more than 9 in 10 Americans …

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