CONTACT: Lise Bang-Jensen

(518) 434-3100

The names, titles and base salaries of 427,759 New York City government employees are now posted on the web at SeeThroughNY.net, the Empire Center for Public Policy announced today.

Users of the SeeThroughNY site can search multiple payroll categories and download the results to a spreadsheet for further analysis, according to Lise Bang-Jensen, senior policy analyst for the Empire Center.

“While portions of the city payroll have been available in print formats, this represents the first time New Yorkers will have easy access to a searchable database of city employees on the Internet,” Bang-Jensen said.

The payroll database offers a snapshot of the city workforce as of June 30, 2008, the end of the last fiscal year, when 427,759 full and part-time employees worked at 85 agencies. It includes base salaries, but not overtime, shift differentials and other extra pay. The payroll does not reflect the latest round of municipal labor agreements, which boosted the pay of many city workers by another 4 percent this year. It also does not include raises and promotions granted to managerial employees in the past six months.

The average base salary for city employees paid on an annual basis was $59,255 of June 30, 2008. The highest paid employee in the database is Education Chancellor Joel Klein, at $250,000 a year. Mayor Michael Bloomberg and two deputy mayors are at the bottom of the list with token pay of $1 a year.

SeeThroughNY, launched in July 2008, includes the complete payrolls of New York’s state government and of 19 state public authorities– including the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA). Also posted are searchable databases of teachers’ union and superintendent contracts for 733 school districts, legislative pork barrel items, and operations spending by both houses of the state Legislature.

A table summarizing salary information for major city agencies is available here.

The Albany-based Empire Center is a non-partisan, independent think tank.