Quote:
Originally Posted by PhillyRunner
Out of curiosity, are you saying the average municipal salary is 26,000/yr? I'm not sure that's right, at least according to the quick and dirty math I did from the city's CAFR.
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My numbers were based on memory and were slightly off, but not by much. Tom Ferrick did an analysis of Philadelphia's budget in 1960 versus today:
Philadelphia 1960 | Its Our City | WHYY
The first number is from 1960, the second is from the '08-'09 budget
City Employees 27,448 | 24,585
Avg Salary - City Employee $ 27,219 | $ 28,822
Avg Benefit Cost $ 4,825 | $ 36,997
As you can see, the average wage has effectively decreased over time due to inflation, but of course the health/pension costs have increased more than seven fold.
Quote:
Originally Posted by PhillyRunner
By my calculations, that means there are just over 11,000 employees involved in the provision of police, fire, and sanitation services, leaving some 17,400 employees doing everything else, including ~2,400 "General management and support" personnel.
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If you factor in Prison and courts as generally "Law Enforcement" related (which is a provision of police services), the number increases by about 4500. Even disregarding the differences in our total employee statistic, this makes it close to even.