Analyzing Data: The City of Boston's Employee Earnings Report

The City of Boston releases an annual Employee Earnings Report that details the yearly income, overtime pay, injury compensation and overall net earnings of those employed by the city through data collected by the Boston Department of Human Resources. The set was published and is consistently updated by the city’s Department of Innovation and Technology analytics team, who have digitally archived employee salaries for the entire Greater Boston area since 2011.

It is important that the City of Boston publishes an annual payroll report for multiple reasons. Although the report is not explicit about its use of the payroll data, it is standard that statistical government documents, such as this one, are published at local, state and federal levels in order to maintain a system of checks and balances. The City of Boston employs people and, therefore, is a business that is subject to complying with United States Department of Labor laws (like overtime pay and minimum wage requirements). In addition to verifying that employees are being rightfully compensated for their work, employees of the City of Boston are technically members of the state government which means that their annual salaries are paid through taxpayer dollars, public money. Because their salaries are considered a government expenditure and constituted through the property taxes of community residents, their annual earnings are public information. A City of Boston payroll report is an extremely fruitful resource for citizens to, for example in a relevant context, compare the discrepancy between the yearly pay of the Boston Police Lieutenant to a long-time Boston Public School teacher.

The Employee Earning’s Report is accessible, however, there are scant contacts available on the City of Boston website in the instance that someone has a question about reading the set or is intending to use the data for a project. According to boston.gov, questions regarding citywide data records should contact the analytics team at the Department of Innovation and Technology through email but it is typically a very bureaucratic process to get in touch with a representative at a government agency. For example, the questions I have regarding (a) the definition of ‘educational incentives’ and qualifications for the ‘other’ [compensation] data pool and (b) the agencies from which the data was pulled from is likely to only be answered by one of the two departments.

Reaching out to Boston’s Department of Human Services or Department of Innovations and Technology would probably be the most credible source of information regarding the data set and its specifics, but I think it would be interesting to contact members of local-state workers’ unions to inquire whether or not having information, such as the Employee Payroll Report, has made a difference in aiding their ability to research and organize, and guarantee that equity is maintained in the workplace.

Overall, The City of Boston’s annual Employee Earnings Report is a well-organized and useful resource that is simple to navigate. Aside from opening a more reachable line of communication regarding city-issued data, the sole improvement I would recommend for the data set is to include the number of years that employee has worked for the city, or at least whether or not they are tenured, in order to exclude outlying factors (like workplace seniority) that have a mutually exclusive relationship to one’s yearly income.

Employee Earnings Report (2017), City of Boston, Department of Human Services