Wednesday, July 24, 2013

The Nightmare Ahead: 19 US Cities Have More Public Workers per Resident than Detroit

Detroit declared bankruptcy due in no small part to $3 billion in unfunded public employee pensions as a result of a massive city workforce that kept growing even as the city’s population shriveled, but a Washington Examiner analysis found that 19 major American cities have even bigger ratios of such workers to residents. Here's the report from WE showing the number of residents per municipal employee.

  1. WASHINGTON DC

    Residents per employee25
    Population:601,723
    Employees:23,631
    Annual payroll:$1,738,914,588
    Average salary:$73,586
    What's not included?
    Back to map


  2. SAN FRANCISCO

    Residents per employee28
    Population:805,235
    Employees:28,660
    Annual payroll:$2,564,000,376
    Average salary:$89,462
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  3. BATON ROUGE-EAST BATON ROUGE

    Residents per employee30
    Population:229,493
    Employees:7,566
    Annual payroll:$336,309,768
    Average salary:$44,450
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  4. NEW YORK

    Residents per employee32
    Population:8,175,133
    Employees:252,701
    Annual payroll:$18,645,049,116
    Average salary:$73,783
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  5. RICHMOND

    Residents per employee39
    Population:204,214
    Employees:5,183
    Annual payroll:$245,372,376
    Average salary:$47,341
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  6. BALTIMORE

    Residents per employee43
    Population:620,961
    Employees:14,438
    Annual payroll:$705,692,760
    Average salary:$48,877
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  7. NORFOLK

    Residents per employee44
    Population:242,803
    Employees:5,512
    Annual payroll:$252,770,712
    Average salary:$45,858
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  8. BIRMINGHAM

    Residents per employee44
    Population:212,237
    Employees:4,749
    Annual payroll:$230,290,992
    Average salary:$48,492
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  9. DENVER

    Residents per employee49
    Population:600,158
    Employees:12,233
    Annual payroll:$802,864,752
    Average salary:$65,631
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  10. CLEVELAND

    Residents per employee50
    Population:396,815
    Employees:7,791
    Annual payroll:$425,029,356
    Average salary:$54,553
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  11. ST LOUIS

    Residents per employee50
    Population:319,294
    Employees:6,335
    Annual payroll:$300,266,820
    Average salary:$47,398
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  12. PHILADELPHIA

    Residents per employee51
    Population:1,526,006
    Employees:29,607
    Annual payroll:$1,727,952,204
    Average salary:$58,362
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  13. ATLANTA

    Residents per employee51
    Population:420,003
    Employees:8,091
    Annual payroll:$371,572,752
    Average salary:$45,924
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  14. NEW ORLEANS

    Residents per employee52
    Population:343,829
    Employees:6,593
    Annual payroll:$308,493,468
    Average salary:$46,791
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  15. CINCINNATI

    Residents per employee52
    Population:296,943
    Employees:5,644
    Annual payroll:$316,340,436
    Average salary:$56,048
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  16. SEATTLE

    Residents per employee56
    Population:608,660
    Employees:10,702
    Annual payroll:$839,048,052
    Average salary:$78,401
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  17. NASHVILLE-DAVIDSON COUNTY

    Residents per employee58
    Population:601,222
    Employees:10,362
    Annual payroll:$536,638,152
    Average salary:$51,789
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  18. CHESAPEAKE

    Residents per employee58
    Population:222,209
    Employees:3,819
    Annual payroll:$172,783,464
    Average salary:$45,243
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  19. COLORADO SPRINGS

    Residents per employee60
    Population:416,427
    Employees:6,852
    Annual payroll:$438,830,400
    Average salary:$64,044
    What's not included?
    Back to map
  20. DETROIT

    Residents per employee61
    Population:713,777
    Employees:11,645
    Annual payroll:$651,437,244
    Average salary:$55,941
    What's not included?
    Back to map

    There's data on even more cities here.

4 comments:

  1. Not sure why they're excluding public school teachers. That's a major expense for local governments.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Not exactly fair to consider only public employees vs # of residents. All the other cities you list, have large # tourists, including people visiting on business. Those tourists generate revenue, that help offset the public employees. Detroit, on the other hand, has little tourist traffic.

    ReplyDelete
  3. The numbers for Baton Rouge are somewhat misleading - they are counting only the city population, but BR has a consolidated city-parish government, so the numbers should be averaged against the population of East Baton Rouge Parish (est. 441,438 as of 2011). This puts it closer to 58 residents per employee, which still makes the top 19.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Woo Hoo! Colorado REPRESENT!!!

    Wait. . . whu?!!!!

    ReplyDelete