Public-sector workers in New York City earn less per hour in wages than their private-sector counterparts. Add pensions, health insurance and paid leave, and the ranking inverts. The charts below cover twenty-five years.
Take-home pay is one piece of what a worker earns. Once health insurance, pension contributions, paid leave and payroll taxes are added in, New York City's private-sector advantage in total compensation is much smaller than the wage gap suggests — and at many agencies, public-sector workers come out ahead.
Average annual wages by ownership, for workers whose jobs are located in the five boroughs. The Bureau of Labor Statistics' Quarterly Census of Employment and Wages (QCEW) is a near-universe of payroll records for covered jobs.
This chart rebases each sector's wages to 100 in 2000 to compare the pace of change. New York City's private sector, propelled by finance and tech compensation, pulled ahead of local government in the mid-2000s and stayed ahead through 2017. Local-government wages have led since 2018, except in 2021.
Wages are only part of compensation. The BLS Employer Costs for Employee Compensation survey measures, per hour, what employers spend on paid leave, insurance, retirement and legally-required benefits (Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance). Public-sector benefits have been richer throughout, and the gap has widened over twenty years, from 1.62 times private in 2006 to 1.82 times.
Retirement is the benefit where the two sectors diverged most. In 2006, employers spent about $0.91 per hour funding private-sector retirement (mostly 401(k) matches). State and local government employers spent $2.54 — already nearly 3× more. By 2025, private retirement spending had risen to $1.53. Public retirement spending had risen to $8.54 per hour, much of it to cover unfunded pension obligations.
The city publishes every employee's pay: base salary, overtime, other pay, fiscal year and agency. That gives a fuller picture than QCEW, with means, medians and the whole shape of the distribution.
No single number represents "the NYC public sector." A DOE paraprofessional earning $40k and an NYPD captain earning $200k are both city workers. Here are the largest agencies by headcount, ranked by median regular gross pay.
Aggregate means mix very different jobs. A fairer comparison holds the occupation constant: a New York City government nurse versus a nurse at a private hospital; a city accountant versus a private-sector accountant. Each occupation gets three medians: New York City government workers, New York City-resident private-sector workers and the broader metro area.
Every number in this project comes from a named, public data source. One set of figures is projected: the snapshot tab estimates New York City benefits by applying national ECEC benefit-to-wage ratios to New York City wages. Nothing else is modeled, imputed or projected. Below is where each figure comes from and what it does not say.
k397-673e, FY2014–FY2025. Fields used: fiscal_year, agency_name, regular_gross_paid, total_ot_paid, total_other_pay, pay_basis. Aggregates computed via Socrata SoQL directly on the server. Median is a Socrata median() function result. Source: data.cityofnewyork.us.