Employee Compensation - FAQ

In addition to the below data use tips, please refer to the data dictionary and column definitions on the dataset landing page. The dataset dictionary is located in the about this dataset section and appears after you click ‘Show more’.

An employee can appear on multiple lines

One employee can appear on multiple lines per year if they changed positions and/or departments mid-year, which happens with some frequency.

Filter the Year Type column before analyzing the data

There are two datasets per year included in this data: Fiscal and Calendar, with the two covering different but overlapping periods.

This is to allow the data to be presented by fiscal year, congruent with our other financial reports, or by calendar year, congruent with how public employee compensation data is provided by other sources, e.g. the State Controller.

Using 2019 as an example, Fiscal Year 2019 covers the period from July 2018 – June 2019 and Calendar Year 2019 covers the period from January 2019 – December 2019.

Due to this overlap, you should filter for one or the other when working with the data rather than viewing both Fiscal and Calendar data simultaneously.

Rows may have zero dollar amounts

Zero-dollar amounts could be present for various reasons, for example a separated employee receiving a one-time payout of accrued vacation hours but no other salary or fringe benefits during the period. In this case, the employee would have a nonzero amount in “Other Salaries” but zeroes in “Salaries”, “Overtime”, and all fringe benefit categories.

Adjustments to employee's pay can result in negative dollar amounts

Negative amounts generally represent adjustments made to employees' pay that were associated with a different time period, expenditure category, or job than the original payment.

An example of this would be an employee who was erroneously overpaid at the end of Fiscal Year 2013 with an adjustment to correct the mistake not occurring until the beginning of Fiscal Year 2014. If this employee received no other payments in Fiscal Year 2014 for the same department and job, the report would show only this adjustment for the employee as a negative amount.