The state of Pennsylvania employs more than 117,000 people.
On a 2019 list of the state’s top employers, “Pennsylvania” doesn’t appear, but four individual state agencies do, making it pretty clear that if you piled the Pennsylvania State System of Higher Education, PennDOT, the Department of Corrections and the Department of Human Services all together with the rest of the state’s employees, there is a clear top dog, and it’s not Walmart.
In fact, the ubiquitous superstore employs less than half as many people as the Keystone State.
So maybe it isn’t surprising that so many of those employees are making as much money as they are.
A Pennlive.com story this week showed that 9,751 state employees top $100,000 in annual salaries. That’s 8.3%.
U.S. Census Bureau figures show that is well above most paychecks in the state. The average per capita income in Pennsylvania is $32,889. The average household income is $59,445.
The average salary in Gov. Tom Wolf’s administration is $58,332.
Now, there are people who skew the numbers at the top. The expertise to run a multibillion-dollar pension fund isn’t cheap. The doctor supervising the work at DHS can’t be replaced with someone making chump change. The guy coordinating 14 separate state universities under the PASSHE umbrella? He’s making good money for a reason.
All of those jobs top more than $400,000, so they drag that average salary up. The average is probably looking pretty good for the guy who makes $14.91 per hour operating equipment for PennDOT or an entry-level corrections officer getting $34,426 per year.
And raising salaries is something Wolf has talked about, usually in regards to minimum wage, which he would like to see moved to $12 per hour. In 2019, he wanted to see starting salaries for every public school teacher moved to $45,000.
That was also the year he increased his own staff’s salaries with raises as high as $33,000.
There is nothing wrong with getting a good salary while working for the state. The people are well served by having qualified individuals in those positions, and that means they had to forgo more lucrative private-sector jobs.
But the percentage of those top-dollar salaries increased by 7.5% in a year, and by 27% in five years.
Just imagine what impact that same money could have if it was spread across the ranks of more blue-collar state workers.
