This is an old edition of the Public Pay app. See the latest edition here.

About the 2022 Public Pay database

What is it?

The Post-Dispatch's Public Pay database helps readers track how much employees earn at many of the area's public agencies, including St. Louis, St. Louis County and the state governments of Illinois and Missouri. It includes employees of both states' university systems, local school districts, area municipalities and taxpayer-funded agencies.

To obtain this data, the Post-Dispatch submits more than 200 requests for payroll records with area governments, schools and public entities using Missouri's Sunshine Law and Illinois' Freedom of Information Act.

The first edition of this app was published in 2016, and it has been updated annually.

What's new this year?

GROSS PAY: In 2022, the pay figure given for each employee in the Public Pay database is their gross pay — the total amount they earned in fiscal or calendar year 2021, including any overtime or additional pay. Often, but not always, this figure includes vacation or sick time sold back by an employee. Previous years' editions of the Public Pay database published estimated salaries.

MORE AGENCIES: If 200+ records requests sounds like a lot more than last year, you're right: This year, we added all local charter schools, as well as every municipality in St. Louis County — those with paid staff, anyway. To learn why some municipalities may not be listed in the database read below.

Why are some municipalities missing?

Readers may notice that not all municipalities are listed in the 2022 Public Pay database. In some cases, the reason for this is that a city had no employees earning more than $20,000. This was true for Bellerive Acres, Moline Acres, Norwood Court, and Sycamore Hills.

Several other municipalities reported having no paid employees at all. They run on a volunteer basis, and may contract with other governments for police, fire, ambulance and other public safety services. These include Champ, Country Life Acres, Glen Echo Park, Grantwood Village, Huntleigh, Westwood and Wilbur Park.

In some small municipalities, city administrators and employees work part-time. Since we limit the scope of this database to full-time workers (with an exception for elected officials), those part-time city employees are not listed.

Some agencies provided the requested records to the Post-Dispatch after the 2022 edition of this database was published:

  • Atlas Public Schools
  • Bella Villa
  • Country Club Hills
  • St. Louis city
  • St. Louis Circuit Attorney
  • St. Louis Sheriff
  • St. Louis Treasurer

Finally, some agencies have not fulfilled the Post-Dispatch's records request, which may be a violation of the Sunshine Law:

  • Cool Valley
  • Explore St. Louis
  • St. Ann
  • Velda Village Hills

How is the data processed?

Each local government or public agency responds to our request differently. Our reporters spend many hours cleaning, standardizing and combining the data from these responses.

Among the many issues:

  • Some agencies provide employees' base salary, and separately provide overtime and other wages, which our reporters combine into one total gross pay figure.
  • Many agencies delineate which employees are full time and which are part time. Others may provide a "full-time equivalency" figure. Some provide no information on full-time status.
  • Governments and agencies sometimes dispute whether the Sunshine Law requires them to provide certain types of information, or whether the law even applies to them.
  • Agencies use many different file formats. Some agencies provide structured data in spreadsheets, which is ideal. But others use formats which make data extraction difficult.

How do you calculate median pay and other figures?

The Post-Dispatch calculates the following statistics for agencies and departments within those agencies:

  • Number of full-time employees
  • Median pay
  • Average pay
  • Number of full-time employees by pay range
  • Median experience
  • Top earner

These figures are meant to reflect the salaried, full-time employees of a public agency. Here is the methodology we use to classify employees as full-time before running the calculations:

  • We exclude any employee for whom no pay figure is listed.
  • We exclude any employee listed by an agency as part time, temporary or seasonal; or who earns less than $20,000.
  • We exclude hourly wage employees for whom no annualized salary was provided.
  • If an agency didn't specify the part-time/full-time statuses of its employees, all employees earning more than $20,000 were included.

Because this database shines light on public agencies, we make an exception to include the pay of part-time elected officials, such as city councilmembers or municipal judges.

What are quasi-public agencies?

Missouri's Sunshine Law applies to public bodies such as city governments as well as to "quasi-public governmental bodies" — organizations that accept public funds, enter into contracts with public bodies, or that perform public functions.

Caveats for specific agencies

States and counties

  • 22nd Circuit Court: Department, full-time status, hire date not provided.
  • State of Illinois: Hire dates not provided.
  • State of Missouri: Positions, full-time/part-time status not provided.

Municipalities

  • Bel-Nor: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Belleville: Gross pay totals not provided for hourly employees. Positions and hire dates not provided for some employees.
  • Black Jack: Department not provided.
  • Bridgeton: Positions, hire dates not provided for some employees.
  • Calverton Park: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided. Full spellings of some names not provided.
  • Country Club Hills: Hire dates not provided for two employees.
  • Edmundson: Hire dates not provided for some employees.
  • Frontenac: Full-time, part-time status not provided.
  • Green Park: Department, full-time status not provided.
  • Kinloch: Department not provided.
  • Maplewood: Hire dates not provided.
  • Marlborough: Department not provided.
  • Northwoods: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Olivette: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Overland: Hire dates not provided for some employees.
  • Pine Lawn: Department not provided.
  • Riverview: Election and appointment dates not provided for trustees and judges.
  • St. Louis Circuit Attorney: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • St. Louis city: Hire dates not provided.
  • Wellston: Positions and hire dates not provided.
  • Wildwood: Hire date not provided.
  • Woodson Terrace: Hire dates not provided.

Universities

  • Missouri University of Science and Technology: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • University of Missouri-Columbia: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • University of Missouri-Kansas City: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • University of Missouri-St. Louis: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.

Schools

  • Atlas Public Schools: Department not provided. Hire dates not provided for part-time employees.
  • Bismarck School District: Department, full- or part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • Central School District: Department not provided.
  • Dunklin School District: Department, hire dates not provided.
  • Elsberry School District: Department not provided.
  • Fort Zumwalt School District: Department not provided.
  • Francis Howell School District: Full-time, part-time status not provided.
  • Gateway Science Academy: Department not provided.
  • Hillsboro School District: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Jennings School District: Hire dates not provided for some employees.
  • Kairos Academies: Hire dates not provided for non-teachers.
  • Kirkwood School District: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • LaSalle Charter School: LaSalle Charter School is not organized by department.
  • Maplewood-Richmond Heights School District: Department not provided.
  • Missouri School for the Deaf: Department not provided.
  • North Side Community School: Full-time, part-time status not provided.
  • Ritenour School District: Hire dates not provided.
  • Special School District of St. Louis County: Data reflects calendar year 2020 totals paid to employees.
  • Spring Bluff School District: Department not provided.
  • St. Charles School District: Departments not provided for some employees; full-time/part-time status and hire dates not provided for some employees.
  • St. Clair School District: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided. Hire dates not provided for some employees.
  • Strain-Japan School District: Department not provided.
  • The Biome: Department not provided.
  • Troy School District: Positions not provided for some employees.
  • Webster Groves School District: Department not provided.
  • Windsor School District: Department not provided.

Museums and libraries

  • Missouri Botanical Garden: Department not provided.
  • St. Louis County Library: Department not provided.

Regional and development

  • St. Louis Economic Development Partnership: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.

Former contributors

Former Post-Dispatch reporter Walker Moskop and developer Andrew Nguyen helped build earlier versions of this app.