California cities spent $37 billion on public employees last year

Public employees make our cities work. They pick up trash, run the airports, drive buses, police our neighborhoods and put out fires. But those employees come with a big price tag — $1 billion for San Jose, the Bay Area’s largest city, in 2023.

Statewide, California’s cities paid $37 billion on wages and retirement, health and other benefits for their workers last year. Explore these five charts to understand how and where that money was spent.

1) San Jose is the third largest city in the state, with the fourth largest budget for city employees

California has nearly 500 cities, ranging from a few hundred residents to 3.8 million in Los Angeles, the largest city. Those cities employ several hundred thousand people around the state.

San Jose has 8,600 employees, costing the city $1.1 billion in 2023, which is about $1,100 per resident.

“We are an A-Z operation — we run an Airport and a Zoo and everything our community needs in between,” said Carolina Camarena, a spokesperson for the city manager’s office.

While San Jose has about 112 residents per city employee, San Francisco has one city employee for every 21 residents.

The foggy city up the Peninsula has 125,000 fewer residents but more than four times the number of public workers. That is in large part due to San Francisco’s unique position as a city-county hybrid. Nonetheless, the city’s 40,000 employees cost about $7,000 per resident.

Across the Bay Bridge, Oakland employs 5,700 people, costing the city just shy of $2,000 per resident.

The cost of employing these workers is more than just wages and overtime. In San Jose, about 18% of employee costs go toward retirement accounts and health insurance premiums. In San Francisco, benefits are a slightly larger portion of the total compensation costs, at 21%. But in Oakland, one-third of all compensation costs are benefits.

2) Cost of city employees has grown 76% since 2010

Overall, the cost of employing city workers around the state grew from $21 billion in 2010 to $37 billion in 2023, a 76% increase. But many local cities have seen much larger increases. The city budget for Oakley, in Contra Costa County, has grown by over 500%. Martinez, also in Contra Costa County, and Oakland are among a few dozen cities whose costs have more than doubled since 2010.

San Jose has seen a modest increase — 65% — in the cost of its employees. But unlike some of the other cities, San Jose’s population is slightly lower than it was in 2010.

3) San Jose and Oakland spend the most on police and fire department employees

San Jose’s police and fire departments receive the largest share of the city’s $1 billion spending on public employees. These departments also employ most of the highest-compensated employees.

In Oakland, the breakdown is largely the same. Oakland’s police and fire departments are far and away the most expensive departments when it comes to compensation for city employees, followed by the public works and transportation departments.

4) Who are the Bay Area’s highest-paid city employees?

The ten largest cities in the Bay Area had 233 public employees with total compensation exceeding $500,000 in 2023. These cities are San Jose, San Francisco, Oakland, Fremont, Hayward, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, Concord, Berkeley, and Richmond.

Of the ten largest cities, the employee that cost taxpayers the most was an electric crew foreperson in the city of Santa Clara. The second- and third-highest were both in San Francisco — the chief executive and investment officer of the city’s retirement system and a sergeant in the police department.

Oakland’s highest-paid public employee is also in the police department — a lieutenant who made $519,000 and cost the city an additional $170,000 in benefits.

In San Jose, the most highly paid employee was a fire captain who made $621,000 in wages and an additional $83,000 in benefits. Outside of the fire and police departments, the only San Jose employee who cost over half a million was the city manager, whose wages were $425,000 in 2023 plus an additional $79,000 for benefits.

“Seeing top-level executives at public agencies making over a half million dollars a year, that’s more than the president of the United States,” said John Tucker, the union representative for AFSCME Local 101, which represents most San Jose city workers besides police officers and firefighters. “I think it’s fair to scrutinize those outliers but not paint all public employees with the same brush.”

5) How have costs changed for Bay Area cities since 2010?

“We’re doing more with less,” said Tucker.