Tag: Government spending

Kansas has nearly the highest number of local government employees per resident, compared to other states.

These are local government employees only. State and federal government employees are not included. The source of this data is the United States Census Bureau. I’ve gathered it and created an interactive visualization. Additionally, 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.

For all local government employees, Kansas had 50.55 employees per thousand residents in 2016, higher than all states (and areas) but the District of Columbia and Wyoming. These employees had an annual payroll of $2,355.09 per resident. Eleven states were higher.

For the country as a whole, the values are 37.33 employees and annual payroll of $2,232.01 per thousand residents.

Considering elementary and secondary education, Kansas had 29.58 such employees per thousand residents. This was higher than all states but Wyoming. The payroll for these employees was $1,237.80 per resident, with thirteen states above Kansas.

Kansas is a small state in terms of population. Might small states have higher needs for employees on a per-resident basis? A plot of employees vs. population shows nearly no relationship between the two. Plots using urban percentage and population density show somewhat stronger relationships, but nothing very significant. (In these plots, I removed the District of Columbia from the data, as it is a special case that is all urbanized.)

Click charts for larger versions.

These are local government employees only. State and federal government employees are not included. Sometimes this causes discrepancies that need to be understood by considering other data. For example, Hawaii has no local employees in elementary and secondary education, as it has one school district which is run by the state. ¹ Because education is a large expense for local governments (in most cases), Hawaii, in these charts, ranks as the state with the lowest number of government employees, considering only local government employees.

Click here to learn about the visualization and use it to make your own charts and tables.

— Notes

Looking at the number of state government employees in proportion to population, Kansas has many compared to other states.

Each year the United States Census Bureau surveys federal, state, and local government civilian employees. I’ve gathered this data and present it in an interactive visualization using several views and supplementary calculations.

The Census Bureau collects both counts of employees and payroll dollars. Comparisons based on the number of employees are useful, bypassing issues such as differing costs of living and salaries in general.

Considering all government functions and state government employees only, Kansas had 18.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees per thousand residents in 2019. 12 states had more. These figures are for state government only. Many government employees are employed by local governments such as cities, counties, and school districts. These employees are not included in this visualization.

In the nearby chart showing Kansas and nearby states, the level of employment in Kansas is high and rising for total employment and education employment.

For details and to access the visualization, click on: Visualization: State government employment by state and function.