About the 2024 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.

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What's new in the 2024 edition?

NEW AGENCIES: We are publishing payroll data for the following agencies for the first time:

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.
A few agencies provide separate rows of data for the same employee if that person held multiple positions or duties during the calendar year. In such cases, we combine the pay figures into one total, and report only the job title for which that employee earned the most pay.
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

Since 2023, we have resumed using statewide pay data for teachers from the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education. The data in the 2024 edition reflects the academic year 2023-2024 rather than the calendar year 2023.

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.

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 2024 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.

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, hire date not provided.
State of Illinois: Hire dates and some positions not provided. Gross pay may also include lawsuit settlements or back pay.
State of Missouri: Positions, full-time/part-time status not provided. Data covers fiscal year (July-June), not calendar year.

Municipalities

Berkeley: Hire date not provided for elected officials.
Beverly Hills: Full-time/part-time status, some hire dates not provided.
Black Jack: Hire date not provided for elected officials.
Brentwood: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
Bridgeton: Position not provided. Some hire dates not provided
Calverton Park: Full-time/part-time status, some hire dates not provided.
Cool Valley: Department not provided.
Country Club Hills: Department not provided.
Crestwood: Elected officials are unpaid.
Ferguson: Department not provided.
Flordell Hills: Department not provided.
Green Park: Department not provided.
Greendale: Department, hire date not provided.
Hanley Hills: Hire dates not provided for elected officials.
Ladue: Elected officials are unpaid.
Lakeshire: Department not provided.
Norwood Court: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
Pagedale: Full-time/part-time status not provided.
Pasadena Park: Hire dates not provided for trustees.
Pine Lawn: Department not provided.
St. Louis Circuit Attorney: Full-time/part-time status not provided for some employees.
St. Louis Public Administrator: Position not provided.
Sycamore Hills: Hire date not provided.
Warson Woods: Department not provided.
Wellston: Hire date not provided for elected officials.

Universities

Missouri University of Science and Technology: Full-time/part-time status, hire date not provided.
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: Department not provided.
St. Louis Housing Authority: Department not provided.