One particular athletic conference in northern NJ: Varsity: $78 Sub-Varsity: $56 Don't know about AR fees, as I've never been one. I find that when I work outside that conference (Private schools, for example), I generally receive higher fees, in the $80-$90 range. Locally, the HS Varsity fees are generally higher than all but the highest level competitive/travel youth games at the same age levels. The Sub-Varsity fees are generally lower than travel games at the same age level.
Now that is interesting because I don't know what most of the high schools I do pay (my wife can't even get her own teacher pay schedule from HR). All I know is that for most schools when I do an AR/CTR pair I get $90. For one school, the same AR/CTR pair of games gets $100.
But you still do reach equilibrium - because, after some short-term market shortages or excesses, an artificially set price point then forces a shift in the demand or supply curve so that an equilibrium is reached at the artificial price point. This shift could be accomplished by refs entering or leaving the market and/or schools changing their referee requirements (i.e. number of refs for different levels of matches). Either way, the market always reaches some equilibrium, even if it's not ideal from anyone's perspective.
I wouldn't say that the posts preceding this one were "smug". Perhaps if you had just stated why you were looking for the information in the first place you would have received more reply's. Frankly to me you sounded like a referee that was concerned about how much they were getting paid personally as opposed to what I think your real purpose was. And speaking of smug...
In Section III of New York (Syracuse to Utica area), fees for games are: Varsity: $81 per referee JV: $55 per referee Modified (7th/8th grade): $50 Mileage: .44 per mile for one official All games are two officials until the section playoff semi-finals when you get three. Section III rules require all officials in all high school sports to get the same fees.
Let's be careful there. If we go back to April 2010 gas prices were almost a dollar cheaper. Are we petitioning for fee reduction? Interestingly enough, if you compare U15/19 fees for pseudo competitive games (not talking DA, etc) I think you would find NFHS is fairly competitive on game fees. From my personal experience, HS actually pays better than most of the youth leagues and pays mileage, when applicable. Several states have even excluded game fees for HS matches from being taxed under state income taxes; certainly makes sense since it's that very tax money that pays the fees. The other thing we need to consider is that many state budgets have suffered lately (but improving) from constraints. I would hope we all agree ancillary costs like sports officials are lower priority than making sure the kids can still play, period. Of course, I'm all for fair increases along the way when possible. Speaking of supply and demand about four years ago the state I was living in at the time had an excess of HS officials, to the point where you were lucky to get three assignments a week. Why? Well, you don't have to pay much in certification, take an open book test and then get to make almost $25 an hour. What else was going on? Yeah... jobs were hard to find. It's that whole demand thing we speak so much of.
We actually had a slight increase here in GA. It went from $57 to $62 for Varsity. $42 to $48 for JV. Playoffs are still the same. The competetive travel league actually pays the least of any league I work for to include rec. The ones that pay the least complain the most about the quality of referees. Funny how that works.
Eastern PA Dual system Varsity - $75 and change Junior Varsity - $55 and change Junior High - 2 referees - $52 and change
Well put. There are two and a half forms in which equilibrium is reached, in my experience. In addition to the two that Mr. Perfect Not identifies, the other form of schools changing their requirements is dropping programs. Referee costs are roughly a third of the cost of a high school soccer team, based on the budgets I used to see when I was on the school board. Schools may drop the JV2/freshman team because of the cost, for example. When overall budgets are pressured, these days by retirement costs in particular, schools will tend to buy a lower quality sports program, which takes the form of deferred facility maintenance, an extra year before uniform replacement and, in the case of soccer officials, two referees rather than three for varsity games, maybe one instead of two for sub-varsity. There are certain institutional restrains on this, however. A state mandated pay schedule for referees, a state rule about how many officials are required for various levels, and an attitude by those who are doing the negotiating that, well, it's too bad but nothing can be done about reductions to the sub-varsity games, confident that they won't be doing any sub-varsity games themselves anyway, only varsity. I.e. the negotiators tend to be senior people, not newbies, and they are usually willing to let the newbies suffer if someone has to.
Wow, I didn't even know you were refereeing in our state. That is the problem here. And I'm not even going to post our pay, it is so ridiculously low compared to other states it would just bias the sample.