State Government Employees in Kansas and the States

Kansas has more state government employees per resident than most states. The trend is steady after rising.

Each year the United States Census Bureau surveys federal, state, and local government civilian employees. ⁽¹⁾United States Census Bureau. Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll (ASPEP). Available at https://www.census.gov/programs-surveys/apes.html. The dollar amount of payroll for a single month (March) is also recorded. In this case, I’ve made the data for state government employees available in an interactive visualization.

In the visualization, I’ve multiplied the March payroll number by 12 to produce an approximation of annual payroll. Using each state’s population for each year, I’ve also computed the annual payroll on a per-resident basis and the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees per thousand residents.

Of note, the data is gathered in March, specifically for the pay period that includes March 12.

For 2023, Kansas had 53.4 full-time equivalent state government employees per thousand residents. This ranked twelfth among the states. These employees resulted in payroll cost of $1,241 per resident, which is nineteenth among the states. These figures are not adjusted for regional cost variations or inflation, which makes the employee counts a valuable measure. Table 2 shows this data.

Click charts and tables for larger versions.

Chart 5a is an example from the visualization showing state government employment count (full-time equivalent) per thousand residents for Kansas and some nearby states. It shows total employment, and in addition, education employment and hospital employment. (Since nearly all employees in Kansas elementary and secondary schools are employees of local government, not the state, the employees shown are working in higher education.)

Two things are evident in chart 4b: The level of employment in Kansas is generally higher than the other states. The trend in Kansas had been rising since 2012 but has been steady the last four years.

The source of this data is United States Census Bureau, Local Government Employment and Payroll Data. The program’s page is Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll (ASPEP).

Click here to learn more about the data and to access the visualization.