Overview

New Jersey Open Payroll provides an interactive, public-facing view of compensation data for state employees paid through New Jersey’s Centralized Payroll System. This prototype demonstrates how open payroll data can be presented in a user-friendly, transparent format as part of the broader New Jersey Report Card initiative established by Executive Order No. 5.

Data Source

All payroll data is sourced from the NJ Open Data Center’s Agency Payroll Explorer. The dataset includes records for state employees paid through the Centralized Payroll System, updated quarterly. This prototype includes calendar years 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Fields include: employee name, department/agency, section, job title, employee relations group, annual salary or hourly rate, year-to-date regular payments, overtime payments, and other payments.

Estimated Benefits Methodology

The “Estimated Total Compensation” toggle adds an approximate fringe benefits cost to each employee’s payroll earnings. This estimate is based on:

• Health Insurance: ~$20,000 per employee per year, based on the NJ State Health Benefits Program (SHBP) average cost.
• Pension Normal Cost: ~13% of salary, representing a blended rate across PERS, PFRS, and TPAF pension systems.
• FICA Employer Share: 7.65% of salary (Social Security at 6.2% up to the wage base + Medicare at 1.45%).

Important: These are estimates only. Actual fringe costs vary by employee based on pension plan, health plan selection, enrollment status (single vs. family), and other factors.

Background

Governor Sherrill’s Executive Order No. 5 directs the creation of the “New Jersey Report Card,” described as “an interactive, public-facing online portal housed within the Office of the Governor” that includes “an interactive state budget analysis tool that displays a breakdown of the state’s spending and revenue.”

Open Payroll is a natural starting point: payroll data is clean and readily available, and total estimated compensation (including salary, overtime, and benefits) represents over 20% of New Jersey’s general fund.

Reference Implementations

• Connecticut Open Payroll -- Official state portal including fringe/benefits costs
• Texas Tribune Government Salaries Explorer -- Third-party visualization with salary distribution charts
• Connecticut Open Budget -- Full budget transparency portal

Download

The underlying data is available for download in CSV format directly from the NJ Open Data Center: