The data is out for the employment phase of the 2007 Census of Governments (the finance phase will not arrive until next summer), and I have thus far tabulated the information for selected state governments: the State of New York, the U.S. average for all states, some other states around the Northeast — New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, and Connecticut — and some other states carried by President-elect Obama in 2008 — California, Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina. One might expect people in those states, as opposed to (say) Tennessee, to have similar public service expectations to those of New York. The data show that New York had less state employment per 100,000 residents in March of 2007 than the U.S. average and all of the states listed save Pennsylvania and California, and that while New York State’s per capita income was 19.9% above the national average in 2006, it’s March 2007 payroll per full time equivalent worker was only 17.3% above average. A more detailed analysis, however, shows this is somewhat misleading — low New York employment and pay in higher education, and the shift of some functions to the local level, offsets above average employment and pay in other categories. The data is attached (set to print in two pages), and discussed below.
First, however, the work that state governments actually do needs to be put in perspective. Like the federal government, state governments collect and distribute a large amount of money but do very little directly, concentrated in particular government functions. The most costly government functions, elementary and secondary education and health care, are actually provided by local governments and private and non-profit organizations, although federal and state governments provide much of the money. Considering government agencies alone, the 4.3 million full time equivalent state workers the Census Bureau counted for March 2007 accounted for only about one-quarter of those working in state and local governments, with local governments accounting for the other three quarters. So local government employment and payroll, and private sector employment and payroll in functions with extensive public funding, are more important issues than the relative number and pay of state workers.
Still state governments are primarily responsible for particular services, as U.S. data in the spreadsheet’s “state overview” worksheet shows. Public higher education — state universities and colleges — accounted for 37% of state workers, and most public colleges and universities are operated by states (with local governments often operating community colleges). States accounted for 83% of state and local government employment in that category. Corrections — state prisons — accounted for another 11% of state government employment, and although local governments have their own jails, states accounted for 64% of total state and local government in the category. These two functions by themselves employed nearly half of all state workers.
States also accounted for the vast majority of state and local government employment in the Natural Resources, Social Insurance Administration (at the state level unemployment insurance and worker compensation), Other Education (mostly oversight agencies such as the New York State Regents), and State Liquor Store categories, though these functions employed relatively few workers overall. More state workers are employed in state hospitals, highway departments, public welfare agencies, the court system, and public health agencies. These functions have a relatively even split between state and local workers. While most police officers and parks workers are local government employees, state police and parks have a separate, different role.
Mass transit and elementary and secondary schools are primarily local government functions, but in Hawaii the state operates the schools while in some states such as New Jersey the state has taken over many school districts. In New Jersey and the portion of New York State outside New York City mass transit agencies are classified as state government rather than local government. In my analyses of local government, I reclassify public school and transit employment, payroll, spending and debt as local government, to make the data more comparable across places. Here I provide a separate line of data excluding these categories.
Beginning with the largest function, New York State had 103 higher education instructional employees per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 174. While New Jersey and California were slightly lower at 102 and 93, most states were much higher. Similarly, New York had 158 higher education non-instructional employees per 100,000 residents, compared with a national average of 359. New York was well below every other state in the table. In part the difference is explained by the fact that people in the Northeast and California are more likely to attend private colleges. New York, however, also makes more of an effort to keep public college affordable if low frill and bare bones. This contrasts with other public services for which New York is either expensive and bare bones (inside New York City) or even more expensive and gold plated (everywhere else). SUNY and CUNY have extensive adjunct staff, and their payroll per full time-equivalent worker is low — just 7.3% above the national average for non-instructional employees and 1.8% below for instructional. That makes the staff poor relative to their neighbors in high-wage downstate New York.
In low-tax Colorado, Virginia, and North Carolina, in contrast, higher education employment per 100,000 residents is more than double the level of New York, and payroll per FTE differs from the national average by about the same percent as overall per capita income. In New Jersey and California the professors are well paid, at 60% more than the national average compared with 27% for per capita income in the former, and 17% more than the national average compared with 8% for per capita income. In most of these states, however, tuition is higher than for SUNY and CUNY, both for in-state and out of state students.
In Corrections, the State of New York’s full time equivalent employment per 100,000 residents is 178, above the national average of 157. New York accounted for 4.7% of U.S. state prisoners in 2005, according the Statistical Abstract of the United States, but 7.3% of state corrections employees two years later. Most of the states in the low-crime Northeast have fewer state corrections employees than New York, although Virginia and North Carolina are higher. New York’s corrections employees earned 22% more than the national average, about the same as the 20% above average for New York State as a whole, but far above the average for Upstate New York where almost all of them work. Corrections employment pay, relative to the national average and per capita income, seems extremely high in California (where there are relatively few workers) and extremely low in North Carolina and Virginia (where there are many). (This is a common pattern in state and local government once the cost of living, population and other factors are accounted for — more workers less pay and vice versa).
New York’s state hospital employment, at 235 full time equivalent workers per 100,000 residents, is much higher than the national average of 140 despite all the state mental hospitals closed or downsized over the years. Only Connecticut is higher among the states analyzed. New York’s local government hospital employment per 100,000 residents is also high at 273 compared with the national average of 191; only North Carolina is higher. As discussed ad nauseum in prior posts here, New York’s employment in private, mostly non-profit hospitals is also sky-high, especially in New York City. Public hospital workers are much better paid, relative to overall per capita income, in California, where there are many fewer of them.
New York has only 66 state highway workers per 100,000 residents, lower than the national average of 79. The state, however, doesn’t provide highway maintenance in New York City, home to half its people, but instead pays New York City to do it. New York’s local government highway employment at 148 is well above the national average of 101; the state-local total of 214 in New York is above the national average of 180 and higher than any other state analyzed, despite New York’s relatively high transit ridership (and the relatively poor conditions of its infrastructure).
The same pattern may be found in public welfare. New York State has only 34 state welfare agency employees per 100,000 residents compared with a national average of 79, but in New York those employees only oversee the programs which are directly administered by the City of New York and the counties. The local government total of 250 per 100,000 in New York is off the charts (and, as we will see again when I compile the local data, not just in New York City). The combined state-local total for New York State, 284 per 100,000, is far higher than the U.S. average of 173, and higher than in any other state in the table. In New York City, meanwhile, social services are provided by an army of non-profit workers under contract. They aren’t counted here. The pay per employee for state public welfare workers in New York, at 25% above the national average, is high given than most are in low-cost Upstate; the pay for local government public welfare workers in New York, barely higher than the national average, is low given that most are in high-cost Downstate New York.
State police are also scarce Downstate, which makes their payroll per full time employee at 58.4% more than the national average sky-high. New York has 24 state police officers per 100,000 residents, only slightly above the national average of 22 and below many of the other states analyzed. Given that the state police only service a minority of the state’s population, however, their numbers are quite high too. Former Governor Spitzer was supposedly going to send them into high-crime Upstate cities to help with actual policing. I wonder what happened to that plan, and if it worked. The police are being staffed and paid as if it did.
New York’s state parks have average staffing at 13 per 100,000 residents, compared with a U.S. average of 12. But many state campgrounds are operated by the Department of Environmental Conservation, in the Natural Resources category which has 18 state workers per 100,000 residents in New York compared with an average of 49 nationwide. New York is below any of the other states in that category, including others in the highly urbanized Northeast. New York’s state parks are not what they were, and haven’t had much investment in recent decades, and fishing and hunting is supposedly on the decline here, along with agriculture. Now that Americans are going to be poorer, and that trip to the Caribbean or Florida may be unaffordable, it is unfortunate if camping at state parks deteriorates, speaking as a long-time user of the service.
New York’s state judicial and legal employment, at 106 state workers per 100,000 residents, is far above the national average of 58, though lower than most of the states on the table (the California number is either an error or that state makes counties pay for their judges). New York State’s judges famously haven’t had a raise in a long time, but its judges, lawyers and court officers combined earned 25.3% more than the national average in March 2007. If the judges are earning relatively less, some other workers must be earning relatively more.
All in all it’s a mixed bag for New York’s state agencies. Some are relatively overstaffed and overpaid, while for others one could argue the reverse. As past analysis have shown, New York’s state taxes are about average as a share of income, while its local taxes are off the chart. This is due in part to the practice of the State of New York shifting costs, notably for Medicaid and social services, to the local level, and in part due to sky high local spending in other categories. Yet it is state operations that are generally the first to be cut in a downturn — and not the prisons or police where the data show high staffing levels. From the point of view of public services that may not make sense. Then again, in New York we pay taxes for sinecures for people with power, not for public services.