Is this why some California cities are going bankrupt
Critics accuse Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of giving away the store in labor negotiations, but while New York City’s government workers make more than local employees in many major American cities, they trail the average pay of their counterparts in California’s biggest municipalities.
Just look at the numbers.
In 2011, local government employees in California’s four biggest cities made an average of $60,800 ($72,600 in San Francisco), compared with $50,600 in New York. (The comparisons are adjusted for local living costs.)
Salaries of New York’s municipal employees overall also trail those in Baltimore ($54,000), Boston ($63,000), Chicago ($56,000), Detroit ($55,600), Philadelphia ($51,200) and Seattle ($55,000).
New York City workers make more than their counterparts in Texas’s biggest cities, but by 2008 they began trailing local government workers in the nation’s 13 biggestcities (outside of California, New York and Texas).
A decade earlier, the differential between New York and California’s biggest cities was much smaller ($43,800 vs. $46,600), according to an analysis by New York City’s Independent Budget Office.
In 2002, salaries in New York also outpaced those in Baltimore, Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philadelphia and Seattle.
