About the data

The salary amounts presented here were provided to the Star Tribune by the State of Minnesota, the University of Minnesota and several local governments under the Minnesota Data Practices Act. The information was provided between March and June 2008 and do no refect any revisions or corrections that might have been made since.

The salary figures represent compensation that was paid or deferred in 2007 for base salary, overtime and other pay, which includes expense reimbursements or amounts earned for working weekends or nights. The monetary value of employee benefits, such as health insurance, or payments to pension plans are not included.

The City of St. Paul was unable to provide a breakdown of total pay by component parts, therefore total overtime pay and base pay amounts for employees could not be enumerated. The counties of Anoka, Hennepin, Ramsey and Washington, the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul, and the Metropolitan Council did provide overtime figures but were unable to provide a total other pay figure. Therefore, base salaries listed for their employees represent the combined amount of regular and other compensation.

Median pay amounts were calculated using hourly or bi-weekly pay rates as provided by the government agencies. Not all agencies provided data for employees that left employment during the year, therefore median pay amounts might differ from other published sources.

An employee's job title and department affiliation represent the employee's position at the time the government agency provided the data to the Star Tribune, however, the employee might have earned the salary as part of a previous position.