The State Worker: California state, local government workers among best-paid

The State Worker

Chronicling civil-service life for California state workers

January 31, 2012

California state, local government workers among best-paid

California state and local government employees remain among the highest-paid in the nation, according to revised 2010 data released this month by the U.S. Census Bureau.

DATABASE: State worker salaries

Full-time monthly pay for March 2010 in the District of Columbia averaged $5,900, followed by California at $5,774 and New Jersey' s $5,540. Nationally, the average pay for full-time state and local public employees was $4,388 for the March 2010 period sampled by the bureau.

The statistic divides a state's total payroll by the number of full-time equivalent employees. The District of Columbia is included because the data takes into account all government jobs below the federal level. The figures don't account for differences in cost of living.

California, the nation's most-populous state, also claimed about 1.8 million state and local government workers, a tad over one-tenth of the nation's non-federal government employees. Still, the Golden State's ratio of 478 state and local employees per 10,000 residents has been a cellar-dweller for years. The state employee-to-California resident ratio runs at about 110 per 10,000, which is also close to the nation's lowest.

Click here for U.S. Census' revised data summary. The link opens a spreadsheet that extracts the state-by-state totals from around the country.

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