Payroll Data

State Employee Payroll Data: Payroll-Salary-Image You can find state employee salaries by agency or by individual employee. There are several ways that you can do that. One publication that provides salary data is an annual report of Executive Branch salaries called the Executive Branch Total Compensation Report. This report, which is updated yearly in January, provides an overview of total compensation for executive branch state agencies. It lists employees, their classification, annual salary, FICA, retirement, insurance benefits, and other compensation costs. The information is organized by department and employee. The information is available based on compensation paid for the most recently completed calendar year.

Another way to find employee salary data is through the downloadable data files. Links to these data files and descriptions of the data they contain are provided below.

About State Employee Payroll Data

The data includes all individual employees that worked and were paid during the fiscal year including full-time, part-time, and seasonal workers - even individuals that worked even a single hour during fiscal year will appear with the actual salary and benefits paid.

The database includes all state employees in the Executive and Judicial branches, constitutional offices including the Attorney General, State Auditor, and Secretary of State's. The data also includes the salary data for employees of colleges and universities within Minnesota State (formerly known as Minnesota State Colleges and Universities). However, the information does not include the University of Minnesota, the Metropolitan Council, Historical Society, or other semi-state agencies funded by grants that are not on the state payroll system. Certain small groups of individuals are also excluded - an example is special agents employed by the Department of Public Safety and a limited number of other identity-protected law enforcement individuals.

Downloadable Data Files

Finally, the complete data files with information for all state employees can be downloaded for additional research and queries. There are a total of 48 data elements about state employees that are public. The downloadable data set contains all 48 data elements. The downloadable data set is in Microsoft Excel 2010 format and includes two tables and the metadata. The file is just under 22Mb in size. The links to download the file are below. When downloading the data, some database knowledge will be necessary to properly join the two tables.

You may see multiple records for an employee. This will occur if the employee had more than one position during the year, or is on leave from one position and holds another. To know which position the person currently holds please refer to the active on end-of-year field. The position with a Y in it is the position they held at the end of the year you are looking at. If all positions say no that means that they had left state service as of the end of that year. A person's total monetary compensation is the total of the following three columns: Regular, Overtime, and Other. Please also note that the person's total compensation for all positions held during the year is listed under all positions for that person. For example, if a person earned $15,000 in position A and $20,000 in position B, the total, $35,000 will be listed under both positions A and B.