Data show how bad turnover was in Rep. Tim Murphy’s office
In the memo, Mosychuk details a “pattern of sustained inappropriate behavior and engagement from the Congressman to and with staff,” including mistreating and harassing aides and “unreasonable expectations and ongoing criticisms.” Mosychuk also writes of “abysmal office moral” and an inordinate amount of staff turnover within the office (“near 100% turnover within one year’s’ time”), confirming Hill rumors that Murphy’s office hemorrhaged employees.
Is it true that Murphy, and his office environment, churned through congressional staffers, as Mosychuk suggests? If so, has he done so since first being elected in 2003, or was his reputation for doing so a recent development?
Using LegiStorm employment data, we took stock of Murphy’s staff employment trends throughout his congressional tenure. Important to note in using this data is that representatives are capped at employing 18 permanent employees at any given time, plus an additional four staffers serving as part-time, shared or temporary aides. Thus, members have a hard ceiling of 22 employees at any one time.
Figure 1 above shows the number of separated staffers—those leaving Murphy’s office—in each year of his career. On average, Murphy had more than eight staffers leave his office per year, resulting in 39 percent of his aides separating each year, on average, even using the most conservative staff total of 22 employees.
Only once in his 15-year career (2008) did Murphy have fewer than six staffers leave his office. During five years of Murphy’s career, 10 or more staffers left, with a high of 16 departing in 2004, just one year after his first year in office. All in all, Murphy aides separated from his office at an incredibly high, and fairly consistent, clip since his election in 2003.
As a second measure of office turnover, we calculated how long each of Rep. Murphy’s aides were employed by his office. Figure 2 presents the distribution of staffers’ tenure lengths. During his time in Congress, just under half of Murphy aides, 48.25 percent, worked in his office for less than one year. Another 25.67 percent stayed only between one and two years. Thus, of the 150 employees Murphy employed throughout his time in Congress, only 25.17 percent of Murphy’s aides remained on his staff for more than two years.
Taken together, these measures of office aide turnover give credence to Hill rumors and Mosychuk’s allegations that Murphy’s office was one in which staffers purposefully avoided or quickly departed after signing on. Though new accounts also suggest Mosychuk was a contributor to Murphy’s “reign of terror,” the employment trends of those serving within Murphy’s office clearly show that the representative faced an inordinate and nearly constant high rate of replacement during his entire run in Congress.
Photo by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters
