In my previous post, I used employment and payroll data from the 2007 Census of Governments, described in my first post on the subject, to compare New York City with other older central cities. In this post I compare full time equivalent local government employment per 100,000 residents and March 2007 pay per employee for New York’s Downstate Suburban counties — Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester, Rockland, Putnam — with other suburban counties with large job bases in the Northeast Corridor. To Fairfield County in Connecticut, also presented in the initial table, I add Middlesex County outside Boston, Montgomery County outside Philadelphia, Baltimore County outside the City of Baltimore, and Montgomery County MD and Fairfax County VA outside Washington DC. With the exception of one of these counties, local government is clearly more expensive in the Downstate Suburbs than in other northeastern suburban counties, due to higher employment levels, particularly for schools, roads and police, higher pay, or both. Even in that county, moreover, the total cost of government may be lower due to lower debts, less rich pensions, and a less expensive Medicaid program that is not shifted to the local level. But looking just at those on the local government payroll, the suburban county where there are even more local government workers earning more money than in the New York Suburbs is…
Montgomery County in Maryland, in the Washington DC suburbs. To be fair, I used other data to assign the correct share of downstate NY transit employment to the area, but have been unable to do so for these suburbs, all of which have transit service. The structure of transit service in the area would make this impossible — the DC metro has its employment registered in DC, where it is headquartered, but also services Montgomery and Fairfax Counties alike. The 314 mass transit workers per 100,000 residents I assign to the NY Downstate Suburbs, however, account for just a small portion of the difference between those suburbs and the other suburban counties. The categories where the Downstate Suburbs are far above the national average, schools and police, account for a greater share.
All of these suburban counties presumably have high quality schools, all have more public school employment per 100,000 residents than the central cities they are adjacent to, but only half have higher pay than the adjacent cities, the way the New York suburbs have had higher teacher pay than New York City (but not higher teacher spending anymore due to higher spending on retirees in the city). The number of instructional employees per 100,000 residents in the Downstate Suburbs, 1,901, was higher than the national average (1,559) and Middlesex (1,657), Montgomery PA (1,330), Baltimore (1,302), and Fairfax (1,691) counties. Fairfield (1,898) is about the same; Montgomery County MD (2,264) is significantly higher. The number of non-instructional employees per 100,000 residents in the Downstate Suburbs, 857, was higher than the national average (689) and Fairfield (615) Middlesex (480), Montgomery PA (618), Baltimore (511), and Fairfax (775) counties. Montgomery County MD (1,096) was again significantly higher.
Excluding the formerly overpaid Finance and Insurance sector, private sector workers in the entirety of downstate New York (including NYC) earned 32.3% more than the national average; but instructional employees in the Downstate Suburbs earned a greater 46.2% more than the average U.S. teacher. In Baltimore County (4.3% above the U.S. average for the private sector vs. 11.3% above average for teachers), Montgomery County MD (31.1% vs. 46.1%), and Fairfax County VA (31.1% vs. 42.5%), the teachers were similarly advantaged; teacher pay was more modest, relative to private sector pay, in Montgomery PA, Middlesex and Fairfield counties.
All of these suburban counties have low crime, and much lower police officer employment per 100,000 residents than the central cities they are near. The Downstate NY Suburbs, however, have 307 police officers per 100,000 residents, more than the national average (207), Fairfield (218), Middlesex (202), Montgomery PA (170), Baltimore County (237), Montgomery MD (200) and Fairfax (148). With less dangerous jobs, the suburban cops in the other metro areas tend to earn about the same as their central city counterparts. The average police officer in the City of Philadelphia, for example, earned 11.0% more than the national average, the average police officer in Montgomery County PA earned 13.8% more than the U.S. average, and the average private sector worker in the entire Philadelphia metro earned 13.7% more than the national average. The average police officer in NY’s Downstate Suburb counties, however, earned 53.0% more than the national average, compared with 32.3% above average for private sector workers downstate and 1.6% below average for NYC cops (though, as mentioned previously, wages temporarily frozen due to contract disputes may have depressed the NYC data).
And the road crews? The Downstate NY Suburbs had 131 highway workers per 100,000 residents, compared with 100 for the U.S. (much of which has much lower density and more road surface per person), 96 for Fairfield, 89 for Middlesex, 71 for Montgomery PA (the state does extensive local road maintenance there), 40 in Baltimore County, 77 in Fairfax — and 140 in Montgomery MD. Highways workers in the Downstate Suburbs earned 34.5% more than the national average, about what one would expect given the level of private sector pay. Highways workers were high-paid in suburban Baltimore and Washington.
Other public services are more difficult to compare, given that some counties have public hospitals and others don’t, some have county welfare departments and some just state welfare departments, some have local government sanitation workers and some private, and some have professional fire departments and some volunteers. One thing is for sure — if you like Parks, Recreation and Culture, public health agencies, and general bureaucracy, move to suburban Washington, where employment levels were really high in these categories, on both sides of the Potomac.