Isn’t technology wonderful? I’ve just finished compiling 2005 local government employment and payroll data from the U.S. Census Bureau, along with some relevant private-sector data, for New York City, the Rest of New York State, the U.S. average, and (well almost done) New Jersey. And, I’m told by the management that I can actually attach the spreadsheet to this post, available for you to download. I will attempt to do so, but if that doesn’t work you can still get it by e-mailing me at vampire-state (at) att.net. I’ll be writing about the implications of the numbers (which are very much like those in 2002, 2000, 1997, etc. etc.) in the coming weeks, but for now I’ll just provide them and explain how they are calculated.
The key is to make data for different areas compatible. For local government employment, this essentially involves adding all local governments in an area together (county, municipal, school district, special district) and dividing the total by its population. But a few additional corrections are required. Whereas virtually all public schools and transit systems are administered by local governments, some are administered by states, so an adjustment must be made to count those as local government jobs as well. Additionally, the Port Authority must be allocated between New York City and New Jersey. All this is in the formulas in the worksheet titled “Step 3.” Public employment is expressed by government function per 100,000 residents in the worksheet titled “Output.”
Finally, since some public services, or alternatives to such services, are provided by the private sector, data for relevant private-sector industries must be examined for comparison. For example, New York City has far more mass transit workers per 100,000 residents than the national average. But that is because it has more mass transit, and its residents have fewer private cars. The city’s high public transit employment is more than offset by a lower than average number of private-sector workers selling and servicing automobiles. Similarly, in a prior post on 2004 public finance data I noted that the city’s public transit spending is offset by lower personal spending on private automobiles by city residents. How about the city’s very high spending on public hospitals and the Department of Sanitation? A different story, it appears.
To evaluate March 2005 pay per employee, a different private sector comparison is used. In the second quarter of 2005, the average private sector worker in Downstate New York (including Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Nassau, Suffolk and NYC), excluding the high paid Finance and Insurance sector (which is clearly a labor market unto itself here), earned 27.5 percent more than the national average. A more typical annual figure is around 33 percent. Given that New York City is a higher-paid, but also higher-cost of living, labor market, the fact that the average local government worker in NYC earned 32.7% more than the national local government average in March 2005 seems about right. In fact, this relationship has held up pretty well through the years. However, you’ll see some very different ratios by type of public service. Clearly, NYC sanitation workers had a very good deal in 2005 (as in 1997, 2000, 2002, etc). And no, there was not an unusual amount of overtime from a massive snowstorm in March 2005. I checked the record at the national weather service website.
The U.S. Census Bureau conducts a census of governments every five years, the most recent in 2002, and provides local government data for every part of every state at the county level. In other years a sample is used to provide local government data at the national and state level. By downloading individual unit data for the City of New York and the Port Authority, however, I provide data both New York City and (by subtraction) the Rest of New York State. While useful for public employment, this data is of limited use in evaluating average pay, because local government workers in low-cost Upstate New York are blended with those in the high-cost Downstate Suburbs. The 2002 data, which I will attach to another post, allows these areas to be evaluated separately. When this is done, total local government salaries are proportionate the private sector in the portion of New York State outside New York City as well as inside it, except that teachers are paid vastly more than a proportionate amount everywhere outside New York City, and in the Downstate Suburbs the police and hospital workers make out like bandits as well. Remember that March 2002 payroll, for some, was inflated by post-9/11 overtime.
Comparing New York City and the U.S. average, one theme stands out relatively consistently: when you have an unusually large number of workers in a category, you generally cannot afford to pay them as much. For example, New York City not only has an unusually large number of local government transit workers, but also a massively-staffed police department and public hospital system. Local government pay per worker is higher than the national average in these categories, but not by as much as private sector pay (even with Wall Street excluded). Ironically the city’s private hospitals are in the same situation – overstaffed by national standards, but not overpaid, perhaps because of a large number of lower-paid workers (relative to other places) bringing the average down. Perhaps jobs done by Local 1199 here are contracted out elsewhere, or perhaps NYC hospitals are just much less efficient.
There are exceptions to this rule, however. New York City’s teachers are (in every year) paid less than proportionally despite having below-average staffing levels, while in the rest of the state the opposite is true. In fact, given the combination of low teacher staffing and low teacher pay, one may wonder why New York City’s public school spending as a share of its residents’ personal income isn’t lower than the national average by more than it is. Until you see how well the (relatively few) non-instructional staffers in the public schools are paid, and consider how much teacher pensions cost. But that is just one of many choices revealed by the data.