Phillip Reese of the Sacramento Bee recently wrote an article, based on publicly available data the paper puts into a salary database, that included nuggets like this:
As of February, about 17,500 permanent, full-time state employees made six-figure base salaries about one of every 14. When November 2003 wages are adjusted for inflation, that number then stood at 11,000, or one in 21. Not included in those counts were University of California workers, and an additional 11,500 of them also earn six-figure salaries, or one in 10.5 . . .
Jim Hard, “president of the California’s largest public employee union,” complained recently that the “new searchable database on state employee salaries may be fun for gossipers and helpful to stalkers, but it does very little to advance the policy discussion about public employee salaries.” The Sacramento Bee responds today in an editorial which includes these bits:
State government is by far the largest employer in the Sacramento region. Close to 28,000 Sacramento County residents work for the state of California. More than 40,000 residents of the four-county metropolitan area Sacramento, Yolo, El Dorado and Placer counties work for the state. Originally the online database was searchable only by a worker’s last name. In response to requests of users, it has been refined and improved. The databse is now searchable by agency, job title or pay range as well. While The Bee’s database may seem groundbreaking for California, similar databases are available for all federal workers and for state employees in Michigan, Georgia, Iowa, Indiana, Kentucky, New Jersey, South Carolina, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, South Dakota, Arizona, Utah, Oklahoma and Missouri.
The Sacramento Bee‘s state salary database is here.
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