How the state payroll figures are made

New Jersey: what the file is

New Jersey’s Department of the Treasury publishes its YourMoney Agency Payroll on the State’s open-data portal: every employee of the State’s agencies, by name, with their department, section, title, pay basis and rate, and their year-to-date regular pay, overtime and other pay. It publishes the fourth quarter of every year from 2010 and the newest quarter, so this hub reads 17 releases, 2010 to January–June 2026, and 1,380,036 records, one per person per release.

Each person has one master record, with year-to-date totals across every department that paid them, and one or more detail records, one per paying department. Every master is checked against the sum of its details, to the cent, before a release is loaded; a release where one does not match is refused. The pages read the masters.

Year to date, and why only whole years are compared

Every earnings figure is the calendar year to the end of the release’s quarter. A fourth-quarter release is therefore a whole calendar year, and any other release is part of one: the newest covers January–June 2026. So a trend, a rank and a comparison on this hub are over fourth-quarter releases only, and the newest release is shown as what it is and never set against a whole year.

Pay is what the State paid the person in the year, across every department that paid them: regular pay, overtime and every other payment, which includes back pay and payouts that fall in the year. It is not a salary rate. The rate the State publishes is on its own basis — an annual salary, an hourly or a daily rate — and a person page prints it with that basis beside it.

A median is over the people with pay above zero in the release, and the count it is over is printed beside it: in 2025, 77,410 of the 78,236 on the payroll. Dollars are each year’s own and are not adjusted for inflation.

What the file covers, and what it does not

The State’s own agencies, from the Judiciary and the Legislature to the executive departments and commissions. New Jersey’s authorities publish their payrolls as a separate dataset, and its public universities, counties, towns and school districts are not in the State’s file at all, so none of them is on this hub. A department is the one the State printed on the person’s record at the end of the release; the few records it printed with none are in the State’s totals and in no department.

A person is the State’s payroll ID

The State gives each record a payroll ID, which it describes as randomly generated and keeps from release to release; this was measured, not assumed, before the source was built. So a person page is one ID’s records, every release of them, under the name the State printed beside the ID in its newest release, and a person whose printed name changed keeps one page. No page decides that two IDs are one person, or that a name is.

Each person page carries the record and what the record supports (Kian’s person-level rule): every release as published, and the rank and percentile of the newest whole year’s pay among everyone in the department and in the State that year. A rank is one more than the number paid more, so a tie shares the lower number, and a percentile is the share paid strictly less, rounded down. The page says what the record is and is not above its figures, gives no figure a cause, and prints no address: the file has none.

Which person pages are indexed

A person page is offered to search engines when its ID is in more than one release, or has a fourth-quarter year at or above $100,000 (Kian, September 27, 2026). Of the 189,304 IDs in the file, 162,039 meet it: 161,947 are in more than one release and 41,154 have such a year. The other 27,265 keep their pages, reachable by their address, marked noindex and left out of the sitemap. While the hub is unlisted, every page is noindex.

What this data cannot show

• Earnings are year to date. New Jersey's fourth-quarter releases are its only whole calendar years; its newest release is part of a year, and is never ranked against a whole one.
• New Jersey's file covers the State's own agencies. Its authorities, public universities, counties, towns and school districts are published separately and are not here.
• Pay is what the State paid the employee in the year, across every department that paid them: regular pay, overtime and every other payment, which includes back pay and payouts that fall in the year. It is not a salary rate.
• A person is the State's own payroll ID, which it keeps from release to release, and the name is the one it prints beside that ID. No page decides that two IDs are one person.

Sources

• YourMoney Agency Payroll — New Jersey Department of the Treasury, Office of Management and Budget · The State of New Jersey's Legal Statement, Section F: anyone may view, copy or distribute State information without obligation to the State, unless otherwise stated. Nothing on this dataset states a restriction. · updated quarterly