Waste of the Day: 8,000+ Employees Outearn U.S. President
Topline: The President of the United States has the most important government job in the country, but even with a $400,000 salary, he is far from the highest paid. There were 8,752 public employees at the federal, state and local levels that earned $400,000 or more in base salary in 2024, according to thousands of open records requests filed by Open the Books.
Key facts: The list of employees includes researchers, doctors, university professors and many more. In total, the 8,752 employees earned just over $4.76 billion in base salary. There were 290 people with salaries of at least $1 million.
The top 10 highest-paid employees are all football coaches at public universities. Kirby Smart at the University of Georgia earned the most with a $12.2 million base salary, far more than Thomas Allen in second place at Indiana University.
Every state except Delaware and Montana had at least one person making more than $400,000. California had the most such employees with 890 people earning $465.8 million in total, but Texas spent the most on its high earners with $538.4 million paid to 806 people.
Florida (533 people), Utah (525) and Ohio (488) were the other states with the most $400,000 earners.
The federal government has 995 people on the list — all doctors, most of whom work for the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Alexander Nyerges, director of the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, was the top-paid public employee not affiliated with a university. He made $1.2 million.
Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at OpenTheBooks.com.
Background: Open the Books’ auditors file over 60,000 open records requests each year to capture every salary paid to public employees across the nation.
Our list of top earners does not include employees whose base salaries are below $400,000 but boosted their earnings in other ways.
For example, one of Los Angeles’ top firefighters had a base salary of $232,603 but collected $644,456 of overtime last year. Ferry workers in New York City earned overtime payments of up to $500,000. Several major cities have reported only their base salaries in response to Open the Books’ open records requests, and not their other sources of compensation, making a comprehensive list of other top earners impossible.
Summary: As taxpayer-funded salaries across the country continue to rise every year, how long will it be until a $400,000 payout is commonplace?
The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com
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