Meaning:
Something which is "above my pay grade" is something which is above your
level of professional responsibility. It is used most often when someone is
declining to take on work for which they aren't qualified or paid.
The expression is most often used in a jocular way when referring to anything
that someone has no expertise about or doesn't really care about. For
example, "My neighbour's cat has disappeared and he wants me to go out with
him in the rain to hunt for it - but that's way above my pay grade".
The phrase is often expressed as "beyond your pay grade".
Background:
The expression hovers halfway between being a figurative idiom and a literal phrase.
The literal aspect derives from the fact that US military, and this phrase is
American, used to pay each rank according to specific pay grades. This
payment system was later extended to many federal employees. An early example
of that literal usage is found in the US Cases Court of Claims, 1883:
The law... indicates pay grades by description. Together they give to the
retired chief engineer 75 per centum of the sea-pay of the pay grade which
he held at the time of his retirement.
The first example that I can find of the figurative use, that is, when no
actual pay was involved, is in the romantic novel Doctor Sandy, 1965, by the
British author Margaret Malcolm:
This isn't like an ordinary marriage sweetie. With royal families involved,
it's as much a treaty as anything else. The politics are above my pay
grade, but even I know everything could fall apart in a blink.
- www.phrases.org.uk [edited]
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"Above my pay grade" is useful when the time comes to say no. It's true at many
scales. In things big and small, there is a place where you draw the line. I was
only able to say "It's above my pay grade" around the time I paid off the mortgage.
