Data is collected because of public interest in how the City’s budget is being spent on salary and overtime pay for all municipal employees. Data is input into the City's Personnel Management System (“PMS”) by the respective user Agencies. Each record represents the following statistics for every city employee: Agency, Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial, Agency Start Date, Work Location Borough, Job Title Description, Leave Status as of the close of the FY (June 30th), Base Salary, Pay Basis, Regular Hours Paid, Regular Gross Paid, Overtime Hours worked, Total Overtime Paid, and Total Other Compensation (i.e. lump sum and/or retro payments). This data can be used to analyze how the City's financial resources are allocated and how much of the City's budget is being devoted to overtime. The reader of this data should be aware that increments of salary increases received over the course of any one fiscal year will not be reflected. All that is captured, is the employee's final base and gross salary at the end of the fiscal year. In very limited cases, a check replacement and subsequent refund may reflect both the original check as well as the re-issued check in employee pay totals.

NOTE 1: To further improve the visibility into the number of employee OT hours worked, beginning with the FY 2023 report, an updated methodology will be used which will eliminate redundant reporting of OT hours in some specific instances. In the previous calculation, hours associated with both overtime pay as well as an accompanying overtime “companion code” pay were included in the employee total even though they represented pay for the same period of time. With the updated methodology, the dollars shown on the Open Data site will continue to be inclusive of both types of overtime, but the OT hours will now reflect a singular block of time, which will result in a more representative total of employee OT hours worked. The updated methodology will primarily impact the OT hours associated with City employees in uniformed civil service titles. The updated methodology will be applied to the Open Data posting for Fiscal Year 2023 and cannot be applied to prior postings and, as a result, the reader of this data should not compare OT hours prior to the 2023 report against OT hours published starting Fiscal Year 2023. The reader of this data may continue to compare OT dollars across all published Fiscal Years on Open Data.
NOTE 2: As a part of FISA-OPA’s routine process for reviewing and releasing Citywide Payroll Data, data for some agencies (specifically NYC Police Department (NYPD) and the District Attorneys’ Offices (Manhattan, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Bronx, and Special Narcotics)) have been redacted since they are exempt from disclosure pursuant to the Freedom of Information Law, POL § 87(2)(f), on the ground that disclosure of the information could endanger the life and safety of the public servants listed thereon. They are further exempt from disclosure pursuant to POL § 87(2)(e)(iii), on the ground that any release of the information would identify confidential sources or disclose confidential information relating to a criminal investigation, and POL § 87(2)(e)(iv), on the ground that disclosure would reveal non-routine criminal investigative techniques or procedures. Some of these redactions will appear as XXX in the name columns.

This dataset is now updated annually here.

Context

This dataset contains the salary, pay rate, and total compensation of every New York City employee. In this dataset this information is provided for the 2014, 2015, 2016, and 2017 fiscal years, and provides a transparent lens into who gets paid how much and for what.

Note that fiscal years in the New York City budget cycle start on July 1st and end on June 30th (see here). That means that this dataset contains, in its sum, compensation information for all City of New York employees for the period July 1, 2014 to June 30, 2017.

Content

This dataset provides columns for fiscal year, employee name, the city department they work for, their job title, and various fields describing their compensation. The most important of these fields is "Regular Gross Pay", which provides that employee's total compensation.

Acknowledgements

This information was published as-is by the City of New York.

Inspiration

• How many people do the various city agencies employ, and how much does each department spend on salary in total?
• What are the most numerous job titles in civic government employment?
• Where does overtime pay seem to be especially common? How much of it is there?
• How do New York City employee salaries compare against salaries of city employees in Chicago? Is the difference more or less than the difference in cost of living between the two cities?

City employee Base and Overtime Salary by Fiscal Year.

City employee Base and Overtime Salary by Fiscal Year.

In 2023, the average annual pay of employees in New York totaled to ****** U.S. dollars. This is a significant increase from 2001 levels, when the average annual pay of employees was ****** U.S. dollars.

The Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) program (also known as ES-202) collects employment and wage data from employers covered by New York State's Unemployment Insurance (UI) Law. This program is a cooperative program with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. QCEW data encompass approximately 97 percent of New York's nonfarm employment, providing a virtual census of employees and their wages as well as the most complete universe of employment and wage data, by industry, at the State, regional and county levels. "Covered" employment refers broadly to both private-sector employees as well as state, county, and municipal government employees insured under the New York State Unemployment Insurance (UI) Act. Federal employees are insured under separate laws, but are considered covered for the purposes of the program. Employee categories not covered by UI include some agricultural workers, railroad workers, private household workers, student workers, the self-employed, and unpaid family workers. QCEW data are similar to monthly Current Employment Statistics (CES) data in that they reflect jobs by place of work; therefore, if a person holds two jobs, he or she is counted twice. However, since the QCEW program, by definition, only measures employment covered by unemployment insurance laws, its totals will not be the same as CES employment totals due to the employee categories excluded by UI.

Data is collected because of public interest in how the City’s budget is being spent on salary and overtime pay for all municipal employees. Data is input into the City's Personnel Management System (“PMS”) by the respective user Agencies. Each record represents the following statistics for every city employee: Agency, Last Name, First Name, Middle Initial, Agency Start Date, Work Location Borough, Job Title Description, Leave Status as of the close of the FY (June 30th), Base Salary, Pay Basis, Regular Hours Paid, Regular Gross Paid, Overtime Hours worked, Total Overtime Paid, and Total Other Compensation (i.e. lump sum and/or retro payments). This data can be used to analyze how the City's financial resources are allocated and how much of the City's budget is being devoted to overtime. The reader of this data should be aware that increments of salary increases received over the course of any one fiscal year will not be reflected. All that is captured, is the employee's final base and gross salary at the end of the fiscal year.

NOTE: As a part of FISA-OPA’s routine process for reviewing and releasing Citywide Payroll Data, data for some agencies (specifically NYC Police Department (NYPD) and the District Attorneys’ Offices (Manhattan, Kings, Queens, Richmond, Bronx, and Special Narcotics)) have been redacted since they are exempt from disclosure pursuant to the Freedom of Information Law, POL § 87(2)(f), on the ground that disclosure of the information could endanger the life and safety of the public servants listed thereon. They are further exempt from disclosure pursuant to POL § 87(2)(e)(iii), on the ground that any release of the information would identify confidential sources or disclose confidential information relating to a criminal investigation, and POL § 87(2)(e)(iv), on the ground that disclosure would reveal non-routine criminal investigative techniques or procedures.

Free payroll history for government employees in open information datasets

Graph and download economic data for All Employees: Total Nonfarm in New York City, NY (SMS36935610000000001) from Jan 1990 to Jun 2025 about New York, nonfarm, NY, employment, and USA.

City employee Base and Overtime Salary by Fiscal Year.

City employee Base and Overtime Salary for Fiscal Year 2014.

Graph and download economic data for All Employees: Professional and Business Services: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services in New York City, NY (SMU36935616054120001SA) from Jan 1990 to Jun 2025 about accounting, New York, payrolls, tax, NY, services, employment, and USA.

Current Employment by Industry (CES) data reflect jobs by "place of work." It does not include the self-employed, unpaid family workers, and private household employees. Jobs located in the county or the metropolitan area that pay wages and salaries are counted although workers may live outside the area. Jobs are counted regardless of the number of hours worked. Individuals who hold more than one job (i.e. multiple job holders) may be counted more than once. The employment figure is an estimate of the number of jobs in the area (regardless of the place of residence of the workers) rather than a count of jobs held by the residents of the area.

City employee Base and Overtime Salary by Fiscal Year.

Public authorities are required by Section 2800 of Public Authorities Law to submit annual reports to the Authorities Budget Office that includes salary and compensation data. The dataset consists of salary data by employee reported by Local Development Corporations that covers 8 fiscal years, which includes fiscal years ending in the most recently completed calendar year.

Graph and download economic data for Total Wages and Salaries in New York (NYWTOT) from Q1 1998 to Q1 2025 about salaries, NY, wages, and USA.

All Employees: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services in New York City, NY was 58.70000 Thous. of Persons in January of 2024, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, All Employees: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services in New York City, NY reached a record high of 58.70000 in January of 2024 and a record low of 26.00000 in January of 1993. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for All Employees: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services in New York City, NY - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Average Weekly Wages for Employees in Local Government Establishments in Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY (MSA) (ENUC105840310SA) from Q1 1990 to Q4 2024 about local govt, Albany, establishments, average, NY, wages, government, employment, and USA.

All Employees: Professional and Business Services: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services in New York City, NY was 58.90000 Thous. of Persons in March of 2025, according to the United States Federal Reserve. Historically, All Employees: Professional and Business Services: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services in New York City, NY reached a record high of 60.00000 in February of 2024 and a record low of 24.70000 in July of 1993. Trading Economics provides the current actual value, an historical data chart and related indicators for All Employees: Professional and Business Services: Accounting, Tax Preparation, Bookkeeping, and Payroll Services in New York City, NY - last updated from the United States Federal Reserve on July of 2025.

Graph and download economic data for Average Weekly Wages for Employees in Federal Government Establishments in New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA (MSA) (ENUC356240110SA) from Q1 1990 to Q4 2024 about NJ, New York, establishments, PA, average, NY, federal, wages, government, employment, and USA.