B.C. Public Sector Salaries Database: See how much public servants make

The Vancouver Sun has collected the names and salaries of nearly 125,000 workers who make more than $75,000 a year at approximately 100 public sector agencies in B.C., and put?them all into a searchable public sector salaries database.

These employees work for the provincial government, city halls, universities and colleges, school districts, health authorities, Crown corporations, some police departments, and other agencies that use taxpayers’ money to fund their payrolls.

Search by workplace, sector, last name or position using the fields below.

For more about how to use the database and highlights of our series, see below.

How to use our public sector salaries database

THE BASICS: There are two search fields, one for filtering by agency and a search box that works across every field in the database.

AGENCY: The agency field has an auto complete function. So, for instance, if you type in “city of” it will offer you all available choices. Search the agency’s full name and not its acronym.

NAME: Search by surname first. If you’re searching by first name as well, note that many organizations list staff only by surname and first initial.

TITLE: Not sure of someone’s title? You can search by partial word, such as?“tech,”?which will bring up all titles including?“technician”?and?“technology.”

ADDITIONAL DETAILS: Clicking or tapping the plus symbol on any row will expand the row to show additional details, including columns that may be hidden when viewed on phones or other small screens.

REMUNERATION BY POSITION: Want to know what all people in a certain field in B.C. earn? Search the title, for example, “teacher.” Want to know which teachers make more than $100,000? Search for a job title or position, then sort by clicking or tapping the “Earnings” header.

SECTOR: Curious what all staff at Crown corporations earn, or what staff at universities and colleges make? Search by sector.

ORDER: Any field can be ordered from highest to lowest, or vice versa, by clicking on the header field (i.e. “Agency”).

SKIP AHEAD: Previous/Next buttons at the bottom of the table allow you to skip pages to get closer to the name of the person you’re searching.

GET THE DATA:?The data powering the database can be downloaded here.

Note to readers: More about the numbers

The analysis was based on employment data from 2020 or the 2020/21 fiscal year, depending on how an agency tracks its finances. Some of the names and positions in the database may be out of date if someone retired or moved jobs in 2021, but the analysis provides a recent snapshot in time of public sector payrolls in our province.

Remuneration information includes base salary, overtime, vacation payouts and severance.

We crunched the data. Here’s what we discovered:

? List of B.C.’s 100 highest-paid public servants reveals it’s still a rich man’s world: According to our research, more than half (57%) of public sector employees are women but when it comes to the province’s 100 wage-earners, 72% are men.

? Most teachers are women, most school bosses are men: A look at the 50 highest earners in B.C. post-secondary schools. (Hint: 47 of them work at one university.)

? More than one-third of B.C.’s highest-paid public servants work for Provincial Health Services: Some of the people at the top of a health-care system in crisis are among the top earners in B.C’s public sector.

? Female police chiefs still MIA, but hiring trends hint at imminent change: There are 35 chiefs or deputy chiefs who oversee 12 municipal police agencies plus the Transit Police in B.C. Only six are women.

Support B.C. journalism by becoming a subscriber today: Our data journalist, Nathan Griffiths, spent months collecting and organizing publicly available information from dozens of sources, including provincial ministries, local governments, Crown corporations, school districts, health authorities and more to create this database. Griffiths and reporter Lori Culbert then analyzed the data and conducted additional research for a series of stories. This kind of in-depth journalism is possible thanks to the support of our subscribers. Not yet a digital subscriber? CLICK HERE for a special offer to access all of our content for just $1/week or $50 for your first year.