This is the second article in our four-part working in Congress guide (Part 1, Part 3, Part 4). If you’re interested in working on the Hill, see also our role-specific guides to internships, full-time roles, and fellowships in Congress.

From an employment perspective, Congress is not really a single institution. It is sometimes compared to a collection of 535 small businesses—one per Member—with each having their own priorities, rules, hierarchies, and culture. What is true for one congressional office or committee may not be true for another, especially across parties and between the two chambers. Ultimately, the only way to find out whether you would like to work in a specific office is by talking to people who are familiar with the staff and the Member.

But there are some general differences between congressional offices that will shape your experience of working in a specific office: (1) whether it is part of the Senate or House, (2) whether it is a committee or personal office, and (3) whether it is part of the majority or minority party.

House versus Senate

The two chambers of Congress, the House and the Senate, are very different institutions. Members of one chamber don’t often interact with members of the other, and both chambers have their own rules and cultures. For example, the House is more majoritarian and centralized, while in the Senate individuals have more influence, including those in the minority (more on this below). The Senate has historically been less polarized, though this has been changing recently. As set out in the Constitution, the two chambers also have slightly different responsibilities and functions. For example, only the Senate has a say on treaties and presidential appointments.

The table below helps illustrate some quantitative and less well-known differences and similarities:

• Senators serve on about twice as many committees and subcommittees compared to Representatives. Almost all Senators in the majority party chair at least one subcommittee, compared to less than half of Representatives. (The next section, on committees, discusses why this matters.) 
• House personal offices are on average one-third the size of Senate offices (though Senate office size varies greatly by the size of the state). However, committees are roughly equally well-staffed (or poorly-staffed) in both houses.
• Legislation faces long odds in both the House and Senate: In both chambers, the share of introduced bills that get passed (around 15%) and that actually become law (around 10% or less) is small.¹ (Most bills in Congress are “messaging bills”, which are introduced with no expectation, or even hope, that they will actually pass.)

	HOUSE	SENATE
Total # of members	435	100
COMMITTEES
Total # of standing committees	20	16
Total # of standing subcommittees	99	68
Avg # of standing committee memberships  / Member	1.8	3.5
Avg # of standing subcommittee memberships / Member	3.5	8.6
Avg # of members per committee	39	21
Total # of members who chair a (sub)committee (% of majority)	102 (43%)	48 (91%)
STAFF
Total # of DC-based personal staff	3,695	2,205
Avg # of DC-based personal staff / Member	8.5	22
Total # of standing committee staff	1,085	874
Avg # of staff / standing committee	57	51
ACTIVITY
Total # of bills introduced in a two-year session	7,542	3,874
Avg # of bills introduced / Member	17	39
Total # of bills passed in chamber (% of introduced)	1,162 (15%)	583 (15%)
Total # of bills enacted (% of introduced / chamber)	442 (6% of House, 11% of Senate)

How does all of this affect your experience of working in Congress?² Every Member, office, and set of circumstances are unique, but as a general matter (for personal offices):

• Because House offices are significantly smaller, the portfolios of House staffers generally include a larger set of topics than those of their Senate counterparts. For example, in the House a single staffer is often the office’s point person on issues ranging from foreign affairs and finance to energy and technology policy all at the same time. This generally means working as a staffer in a House personal office is more frenetic (though the Senate is only slightly better).³  
• Because House members have to be re-elected every 2 years (compared to 6 for Senators) they operate on shorter time horizons. So, somewhat more of their staff’s work tends to focus on public relations and highly visible projects relevant to electoral success (though this can depend on how electorally safe their seat is). Generally speaking, work in the House requires a greater tolerance of politicization.
• Because House members serve on fewer committees and generally have less individual influence, the actual impact you can have as a House staffer is limited to a narrower set of issues (which issues those are depends on your member’s interests and committee assignments).⁴ 
• Because committees are bigger and power is more concentrated in the House, the chances that you have an impact in the House depend more strongly on whether your boss is in a leadership position (either on their committee or in their party more broadly). If your boss is influential, you may be able to have impact in a larger range of areas.

Committee versus personal office

Much of the substantive work of Congress—such as crafting legislation, conducting investigations, and holding hearings—is done in committees. Every Member sits on at least one committee (average of 1.8 per Representative and 3.5 per Senator, see table above). The vast majority of a Member’s legislative activity and influence will involve issues that fall within their committees’ jurisdiction.

The most important congressional committees are “standing committees,” of which there are 20 in the House and 16 in the Senate. Each of these committees has their own areas of jurisdiction and federal agencies that they oversee. There are also a handful of “special,” “select,” and “joint” committees that are usually (though not always) less influential. A full list of committees is available here. (see also the committee analysis in Part 3)

The bulk of congressional staff works in personal offices (“personal staff”), but a significant portion are committee staff (~25%, see table above).⁵ The day-to-day work of committee staffers tends to be different from that of personal staff. Some of the main differences between committee and personal office work include: 

1. Committee staff are typically more senior and experienced. Committee positions are seen as more prestigious, and turnover in these roles tends to be lower (especially in the Senate). Committee staff are also better-paid.   
2. Committee staff do not deal with constituent service, which takes up a lot of personal office staff time. For example, in the House, a junior personal legislative staffer could spend 50-75% of their time processing constituent questions, feedback, and requests.⁶ 
3. Committee staff tend to be more specialized, with narrower issue portfolios. They therefore get to build up more expertise, but this also means that they interact with fewer outside groups and stakeholders. 
4. Committee staff generally take the lead on the details of substantive legislative work, or, at minimum, assist personal office staff when crafting legislation that will be debated and voted on by the committee. They also have more oversight power and experience, leading agencies to pay more attention to them.

None of this means that committee staff work is apolitical or leisurely. You can still get sidetracked by news cycles, fall victim to partisan bickering, get pulled off a project on short notice to organize a hearing or write statements, and so forth. The frequency with which this happens depends on the jurisdiction and culture of the committee and the personalities of its senior members.

As a committee staffer, you will still be associated with one of the two parties. The Chair of the committee always comes from their chamber’s majority party, and the Ranking Member (RM) is the minority party’s designated lead. Almost every committee staff role is designated as either a “majority” or a “minority” role. The Chair and RM control much of the committee staff hiring and set the committee’s agenda (more on this below). Committee staff often—especially in the Senate—work closely with the personal staff of the Chair or RM, depending on their party affiliation. While the House and Senate are very different institutions to work for from the perspective of personal office staff, for committee staff the distinctions between them are smaller.⁷

Most committees have multiple subcommittees, each of which also have a Chair and RM. These subcommittees can often set their own agendas to some extent, hire their own staff (especially in the Senate), and do a lot of the legwork on legislation, oversight, and so forth. In principle, all of the points about committee staff work above also apply to subcommittee staff, although intra-committee power dynamics can sometimes diminish subcommittees’ influence over issues that would normally fall within their purview. 

Majority versus minority party

The third overarching factor that will affect your work experience in Congress is whether you work for the majority or minority party in your chamber. Because agenda-setting power is concentrated in the majority—because of their control of committees and which bills come to the floor—it is harder to get things done while in the minority.⁸ The majority party also gets to hire more staff, especially in the House. It’s generally better (and more pleasant) to work for your chamber’s majority party.

However, the extent to which being in the majority matters depends on a few factors:    

1. House versus Senate. The House is more majoritarian than the Senate, which means it’s harder for the minority to have any kind of influence. In the Senate, where the filibuster and individual “holds” are common legislative tools, the axiom goes that “the majority determines what comes to the floor and the minority determines what leaves.” 
2. Issues. Some issues are less polarized than others, and on less polarized issues the minority has a larger chance of influencing the content of congressional action, for example through bipartisan staff work.   
3. Committees. Some (sub)committees are also less polarized. This is related to, but also distinct from, the topics they work on. If a committee has jurisdiction over many hot-button issues, its culture is more likely to be polarized, and bipartisan initiatives rare. However, there are also other ways a committee could become polarized, such as when the leading members or their senior staffers simply don’t get along.
4. Presidency. Minority staffers also have more opportunities for influence when their party controls the presidency, as they can then influence and coordinate with White House and agency legislative staff.

You may not have much control over whether you work for the majority or the minority. Many of us have policy positions that are only compatible with one party’s agenda, and it makes sense to work for that party regardless of their current electoral fortunes. Nor does working for the minority party necessarily ruin your experience or impact. For example, minority staffers can lay the groundwork for big initiatives that they can pursue once the political winds shift, or work on a bipartisan bill that has a chance of immediate passage. Minority staffers also gain the same career-related benefits (e.g. skills, network, etc.).

Office culture

Members have great latitude in how they run their offices. Since a Member’s personality and management skills can vary widely (from excellent to alarming), many aspects of Hill offices are similarly variable, including the office culture and treatment of staff. For example, some offices are much more hierarchical than others, have worse work-life balance, etc.

You should try to seek out the better-run offices, not only because you’ll grow and enjoy yourself more, but also because these tend to be in well-run offices with talented, high-value staff, who you get to learn from and network with. If you have the choice between an office with a bad work culture working on policy issues you’re interested in and an office with a great work culture working on less relevant issues, you should likely prefer the latter (though a lot depends on the details). 

Assessing an office’s environment can be difficult when first applying to congressional offices. Here are a few tips for assessing an office’s environment:

• Reach out to previous or current staff of the office (via LinkedIn, your school’s career center, or personal connections) and ask them if they’d be willing to talk about their experience. This can be a cold email/message (see above, and here for example cold emails from a congressional context).
• During an informational interview, ask questions about the office culture. The more you can make these questions specific to the office you’re applying to, the better. Generically, this may include questions like:
  • (1) “What would it look like if a staffer really excelled at their role?”
  • (2) “What is your favorite part about working in this office?”

A note on partisanship and political affiliation

There are several reasons why you should generally favor offices of the party you’re affiliated with: (1) an ideologically aligned office is more likely to offer you a position; (2) you’ll likely get more value from your work, in terms of personal enjoyment and building a professional network; and (3) your office choice can influence your future policy opportunities, including further work in Congress, in partisan think tanks, or if you’ll ever run for office.

In practice, staffers tend to stick with one of the two major parties over the course of their careers, and the large majority of their network will be with other staffers from their own party.⁹ This means that the relationships you build during an internship with one party are unlikely to be very helpful for pursuing roles with the other party.

Still, if your personal political or policy ideas are compatible with both political parties, it’s not unheard of to switch parties as a staffer, especially in committee roles. For example, you could start in a moderate Republican’s personal office and subsequently apply for a Democratic committee position. But the viability of switching strongly depends on the circumstances, and it is generally very difficult to pull off. The vast majority of people on the Hill pick a side and stick with it, whether they like it or not. If partisanship is strongly aversive to you, think twice before working in Congress.

This advice also applies to Hill internships, though less strongly. In most cases, interning in the office of a Member not of your party is unlikely to significantly harm your career, particularly if you grew up in the district/state of the member you interned for. If you later have to explain what party you support, you can simply say that this was the main congressional opportunity available to you due to home-state effects (e.g. if you are a Democrat from a red state or a Republican from a blue state). 

Footnotes