In looking at recent employment trends in at the university, we find that the there has been a significant increase in the number of highly compensated individuals. In fact, in 2004, there were 1,890 employees making over $200,000 a year, and eight years later, there were 5,461. This tripling of highly compensated individuals occurred during a period of reduced state funding and a financial crisis that resulted in layoffs, a salary furlough, massive tuition increases, and system-wide budget cuts. Furthermore, in 2012, the university employed, 262,415 people for a total payroll of $11.2 billion, and the people making over $200,000 represented just 2% of the employees, but they earned 14% of the income. In contrast, during 2004, the people earning over $200,000 represented less than 1% of the workers, and they took in 7% of the income. Just like the rest of the American economy, the trend thus has been to concentrate income at the top.
If we look at who the high earners are in the UC system, we discover that they are medical faculty, administrators, athletic coaches, law professors, business professors, and graduate faculty. Almost none of the employees have anything to do with undergraduate education and none of them are unionized. In contrast to this group of highly compensated individuals, we find the majority of teachers and workers who receive moderate incomes and are mostly unionized. One thing then to learn from this example is that unionization is clearly not driving tuition increases, and in the case of undergraduate instruction, wages have remained stable, but they have not kept up with the huge increases of the top earners.