About the 2023 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 requests payroll records from more than 100 government bodies 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 for 2023?

TEACHERS: We have resumed using statewide data for teachers from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education after hearing from readers who didn't like the change we made in 2021. The DESE data is broad, covering the entire state; but it's also shallow, including only certificated educators. This means school staff such as cooks, custodians or tech support are not listed.

GROSS PAY: The pay figure given for each employee in this edition of the Public Pay database is their gross pay — the total amount earned, including overtime or additional pay — for the previous calendar year. Sometimes this figure includes vacation or sick time sold back by an employee. We introduced this change in the 2022 edition of the Public Pay database. Prior to that, we published estimated salaries.

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 government 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.

Teacher pay

Beginning in 2023, we have resumed using statewide pay data for teachers from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. This data reflects the academic year 2022-2023 rather than the calendar year 2022. For each teacher, DESE provides regular-term salary, extended contract pay and extra duty pay. We use the regular-term salary figures to calculate a median salary for each school district and school building. For individual teachers, we display regular salary as well as total pay, which is the sum of all three categories.

Why are some municipalities missing?

Readers may notice that not all municipalities are listed in the 2023 Public Pay database. In most cases, the reason for this is that the city had no full-time employees earning more than $20,000 and also did not pay any elected officials. This was true of Bellerive Acres, Champ, Country Life Acres, Huntleigh and Westwood.

One city provided the requested records to the Post-Dispatch after the 2023 edition of this database was originally published:

  • Country Club Hills

Corrections

The following issues were fixed after this database was first published.

  • Sept. 7, 2023: A programming mistake resulted in the Post-Dispatch miscalculating regular salaries and total pay for teachers who were listed as having duties at multiple buildings in DESE's data. We have corrected this error.
  • Oct. 4, 2023: A misinterpretation of records provided by the village of Riverview resulted in the Post-Dispatch miscalculating the gross pay of village employees. We have corrected this error.
  • Oct. 24, 2023: A programming mistake caused the Post-Dispatch to publish incorrect pay totals for a small number of employees whose pay amounts were blank in the data provided by their respective agencies. We have corrected this error.
  • Nov. 7, 2023: A programming mistake resulted in the Post-Dispatch miscalculating total pay and primary job title for employees who were listed in the UM System data as having multiple positions. We have corrected this error.
  • Feb. 28, 2024: DESE provided incorrect regular-term salaries for several teachers. We have updated these salaries with the correct figures.

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/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • State of Illinois: Hire dates not provided.
  • State of Missouri: Positions, full-time/part-time status not provided. Data covers fiscal year (July-June), not calendar year.

Municipalities

  • Ballwin: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Bel-Nor: Department not provided.
  • Belleville: Position, hire date not provided.
  • Black Jack: Hire date not provided for elected officials.
  • Breckenridge Hills: First name not provided.
  • Bridgeton: Position not provided.
  • Cool Valley: Department and position not provided for some.
  • Crestwood: Hire date, department not provided.
  • Des Peres: Department not provided.
  • Edmundson: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • Fenton: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Ferguson: Department not provided.
  • Florissant: Some full-time/part-time statuses not provided.
  • Glen Echo Park: Hire date not provided.
  • Grantwood Village: Hire date not provided.
  • Green Park: Full-time/part-time status, and hire date for officials not provided.
  • Jennings: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Marlborough: Some hire dates not provided.
  • Normandy: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Northwoods: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Norwood Court: Hire date not provided.
  • Oakland: Hire date not provided.
  • Olivette: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • Pasadena Park: Hire date not provided for elected officials.
  • Riverview: Positions not provided.
  • Rock Hill: Hire date, department, full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • St. Louis Circuit Attorney: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • St. Louis Collector of Revenue: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • St. Louis Firemen's Retirement System: Department not provided.
  • St. Louis License Collector: Some positions not provided.
  • St. Louis Police Retirement System: Department not provided.
  • St. Louis Public Administrator: Positions not provided.
  • St. Louis Recorder of Deeds: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
  • St. Peters: Gross pay determined based on W-2 tax forms.
  • Twin Oaks: Hire date not provided for elected officials.
  • Vinita Park: Hire date not provided.
  • Warson Woods: Hire date not provided for elected officials.
  • Wellston: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • Wilbur Park: Hire date not provided.
  • Woodson Terrace: Hire date, position not provided.

Universities

  • Missouri University of Science and Technology: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • University of Illinois-Chicago: Department and position not provided for a few employees.
  • University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign: Department and position not provided for a few employees.
  • University of Missouri Health Care: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
  • University of Missouri System: 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.

Museums and libraries

  • Missouri Botanical Garden: Full-time/part-time status not provided.

Regional and development

  • Explore St. Louis: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided for some employees.
  • St. Louis Development Corp.: Department not provided.
  • St. Louis Economic Development Partnership: Department, full-time/part-time status not provided.

Former contributors

Former Post-Dispatch journalists Walker Moskop, Andrew Nguyen and Janelle O'Dea helped build earlier versions of this database.