Working For The City Pays!

A nice followup to that online database that allows you to look up the base salary of city employees: City employee pay and benefits have risen 63% in the past 8 years, according to the Citizens Budget Commission. Check out the chart above—you'll see that pay has gone up an average of 33%, while health insurance has gone up almost 100%. In private industry, between 2000 and 2008, salary + benefit compensation has only increased by 31% (salaries by 32%, other benefits by 40%).

The Post points out these are "just averages...Firefighters, whose contracts call for built-in overtime and 20-year retirements, 'cost' an average of $186,464 each. Cops, with similarly generous benefits, came in at $164,045. Teachers and other instructional personnel averaged $98,505. The remaining civilian workers brought up the rear at $83,279." The CBC's Carol Kellerman tells the NY Times, “These skyrocketing costs are stunning, and they impose an enormous, and growing, burden on increasingly strained taxpayers. Corrective action is essential and can no longer be delayed.”

Some of this is attributed to Mayor Bloomberg's generous policies and contract re-negotiations, but his office says the mayor supports pension reform but can't do anything about it without the state's action (Governor Paterson has more recently promised to help). Mayoral spokesman Marc LaVorgna added, “Rapidly rising [health care] costs are not unique to New York City government. That’s a national problem and there’s really not a local solution to what’s a national health care problem.”

Contact the author of this article or email tips@gothamist.com with further questions, comments or tips.

By Jen Chung in News on January 9, 2009 1:42 PM

Comments [rss]

inoyourider

Nothing is wrong with cops and firefighters having a decent salary and retirement. They should be rewarded for the jobs they do.

How much would it take you to deal with the scum that they do?

Probably not 45k.

Or a teacher.

Have you seen the kids in our schools these days?

In case you didn't notice 69k is NOT a lot of money here in NYC.

Anna_Merkin

I love how many assume the worst instead of trying to peel back these averages objectively.

nohateparade

what asshole created this using comic sans?

firewire

and without using a spell-checker.

"Pension Contibutions"

bluerain

Alot of City jobs are handed out in the following order:

1. Whose re-election campaign you funded.

2. What color your skin is. If its white and not gay, go to the back of the line.

3. If you're willing to conform to their idea of mediocrity.

I think that every year there should be fewer city workers than the year before.

I agree with a few posters above. The size of the city government rivals the federal government. Does someone have comparison numbers?

ohpoorme

Damn - I left the employ of the City too soon! And BTW - most city employees are actually hard working and committed to the ideal of civil service, that is working for the benefit of the greater good.

Hey NICE GASH

Oh well, thats the gamble you take. Everyone on wall st. and the dot commers were living the high life for years and years.

Now that things come crashing down they want to look at our health insurance benefits?

Sorry guys, going into finance and marketing was your choice...not mine. Sorry you took a gamble and it didn't pay out.

Jen S

Except now it's affecting people who don't work in those areas. Those mfers are screwing up my life too!

IvoryJive

Just try to find someone who will run into a burning building for $36K a year without overtime, scaled pay, health insurance, disabilities, pension, and early retirement. Someone who wouldn't leave as soon as they found a better job, wasting all the money you spent training them. Cops, firefighters, teachers - this is what it costs to retain these people. As for the morons at the post office? - that's federal so this article doesn't speak to their compensation.

fugothamist

ok cops, firefighters, teachers

now what about the rest of the 250K+ "public servants"

JenChungsBaby

Those three categories cover around 130,000 of the employees. There are over 80,000 teachers alone.

dr zippy

There's 40,000 police, 15,000 firefighters, 75,000 teachers, and 10,000 Sanitation workers so your 250K estimate is way off. But keep going with your fantasy that the city has 100's of thousands of extraneous employees.

SimonLok

there are actually 280,649 as of the end of 2008, so its an underestimate... and there are too many public employees. The state and city budgets are breaking down and people are no longer willing to pay the extremely high taxes in this place to keep it up... especially now when jobs are leaving as well. The public sector needs to wake up to this or many will be left with absolutely nothing when the state or city have to claim bankruptcy under their weight.

SimonLok

the sick thing is, does NYC need over 280,000 employees? WTF do they all do? (Besides the ones I see that do absolutely nothing) Most states don't even have that many and cover far larger areas.

Felix Hoenikker

Entitlements like this are unsustainable in a global economy except under the setting of protectionism, strong nationalism, and a society with low expectations. France anyone?

kissel

I don't make anywhere near what these SOBs make, yet I get handed another tax increase on my crap apartment. I can barely get by after paying taxes to this city. This is ridiculous.

Bloomberg, you have been a complete disaster as Mayor!

drewo

Pensions and entitlements are the untouchable areas our politicos are afraid to address. Probably because they too have incredibly fat publicly-funded pensions waiting in the wings.

zodak

you guys obviously have trouble understanding what the word average means.

fugothamist

penions and the "20 and out" are killing the city

people are living longer, these retirement benefits are overly generous and unsustainable

JenChungsBaby

The salary increase compared with the private sector have been virtually the same. The issue is with the benefits, health insurance and pensions mostly. And the difference is mainly because the private sector is eliminating benefits left and right. Over 40 million people without health insurance in this country and almost nobody with a pension, just rolling the dice on Wall Street with their 401k or 403b.