How much are Arizona employees paid? See Republic's latest salary database
Arizona doesn’t publish a list of salaries for public employees, though they are among the most significant costs any government incurs (a single employee like a college football coach can earn $3.9 million in salary).
So, every year, The Arizona Republic does.
Reporters sent dozens of requests to individual agencies, asking for detailed data for each employee. The Republic compiled the information into a comprehensive, searchable tool.
Prior releases of this data revealed that the University of Arizona paid a dean $1 million while he was on administrative leave following a sexual assault charge and uncovered pay inequities in the Secretary of State’s Office.
This year’s version of the tool — its fifth iteration — contains salary information for more than 100,000 people from 28 government employers.
It includes employees from the state of Arizona, several counties, more than a dozen municipalities and the state’s three public universities.
Most data in this tool covers the 2022 fiscal year (July 1, 2021, to June 30, 2022). There are some exceptions: Phoenix publishes its employee compensation data online, and reported data for the 2022 calendar year ending Dec. 31, 2022. Data for Prescott comes from the 2023 fiscal year. Gilbert’s annual rates are for the 2024 fiscal year, but the city’s actual wages data is for the 2022 fiscal year.
Some employers reported snapshots of data from before the end of the fiscal year — for example, UA provided data as of October 2021 — and some employees may have received a raise before the end of the fiscal year.
Tucson, Flagstaff and Yuma County provided data insufficient to include in this compilation. Reporters will include this data if and when the entities provide updated information.
If you want us to request salary data from a government employer not included in this database — or if you see something in this data that merits further investigation, or something an employer reported inaccurately — reach out to The Republic by filling out the form at https://gannett-nxuao.formstack.com/forms/arizona_government_salaries_fy_2021_tips_and_corrections.
What's included in the Arizona salary database
Annual rate of pay: This is an employee's official rate of pay. It may not be the same as the actual wages, as it typically does not take into account overtime, bonuses, furloughs or other factors that might have caused an employee's actual wages to increase or decrease.
Actual wages: This figure is the amount of pay employers reported when asked for "total regular pay or wages earned, minus overtime, benefits or allowances." Not every employer provided this figure; it is listed for those that did. This figure most likely does not include stipends, allowances, retroactive pay and many other specialized forms of compensation for certain employees.
For an employee who began work midway through the fiscal year, "actual wages" might only include a portion of the "annual rate of pay," because that person only worked for part of the year.
Overtime: This amount is listed in all cases in which the employer reported it. It represents the amount employees made in overtime pay.
Hourly rate of pay: This figure is provided by the employer, and may or may not suggest that the employee is paid by the hour.
Employment status: This field generally describes whether an employee works full- or part-time. In most cases, the information is provided as it was reported by the employer.
Fields that are not included, or are blank, were not provided by the employer for that employee.
Former Republic reporter Geoff Hing contributed to this report.
Reach Sahana Jayaraman at Sahana.Jayaraman@gannett.com. Follow her on X, formerly Twitter, @SahanaJayaraman.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Latest Arizona government salary database from azcentral.com
