{"id":862,"date":"2025-09-28T22:41:28","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T22:41:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/?p=862"},"modified":"2025-09-28T22:41:28","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T22:41:28","slug":"8000-public-employees-make-more-than-the-president-some-over-1-million","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/8000-public-employees-make-more-than-the-president-some-over-1-million\/","title":{"rendered":"8000 PUBLIC EMPLOYEES MAKE MORE THAN THE PRESIDENT, SOME OVER $1 MILLION!"},"content":{"rendered":"
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More than 8,000 public employees get paid MORE than the president<\/h1>\n

Nearly 300 getting paychecks for $1 million and up<\/p>\n

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By\u00a0Jeremy Portnoy, Real Clear Wire<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Topline: <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

Key facts: <\/strong>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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Florida (533 people), Utah (525) and Ohio (488) were the other states with the most $400,000 earners.<\/p>\n

The federal government has 995 people on the list \u2014 all doctors, most of whom work for the Department of Veterans Affairs.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Search all federal, state and local salaries and vendor spending with the world’s largest government spending database at <\/em>OpenTheBooks.com<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Background: <\/strong>Open the Books’ auditors file over 60,000 open records requests each year to capture every salary paid to public employees across the nation.<\/p>\n

Our list of top earners does not include employees whose base salaries are below $400,000 but boosted their earnings in other ways.<\/p>\n

For example, one of Los Angeles’ top firefighters<\/a> had a base salary of $232,603 but collected $644,456 of overtime last year. Ferry workers<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Summary: <\/strong>As taxpayer-funded salaries across the country continue to rise every year, how long will it be until a $400,000 payout is commonplace?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More than 8,000 public employees get paid MORE than the president Nearly 300 getting paychecks for $1 million and up By\u00a0Jeremy Portnoy, Real Clear Wire 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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-862","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=862"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":863,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/862\/revisions\/863"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=862"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=862"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sterlingcooper.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=862"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}