Government employee costs in the states

The states vary widely in levels of state government and local government employees and payroll costs, calculated on a per-person basis. Kansas ranks high in these costs, nationally and among nearby states.

Two states have annual payroll costs of over $4,000, calculated by taking the total payroll cost and dividing by population. Many states operate on little more than half that. Only ten states have total government employee payroll costs greater than Kansas, on a per-person basis. (This does not include federal government employees.)

When looking at a selection of nearby states, we see that only Nebraska has higher payroll costs for state and local government employees, when calculated on a per-person basis using the state’s population.

This data is from the U.S. Census Bureau for 2012, the most recent year available. Using Tableau Public, I created an interactive visualization. I show the full-time equivalent employees divided by the population for each state. Also, the annual payroll divided by population. (The Census Bureau supplies payroll data for only one month, the month of March, so I multiply by 12 to produce an approximation of annual payroll cost.)

There are two series of data, “Local government” and “State government.” The first series refers to the number of local government employees in each state, such as city and county employees. The second series refers to the number of state government employees in each state. Check boxes allow you to include either or both series in the chart.

By clicking on column headers or footers (“State,” “Annual payroll per person,” Full-time equivalent employees per person”) you can sort by these values.

Click here to open the visualization in a new window. Data is from United States Census Bureau, Government Employment & Payroll, released March 2014.