Understanding Albany'S Employee Salaries

---

People are at the center of the City of Albany’s government, over 1400 full and part-time members of the team that provide public safety, manage the City’s infrastructure, deliver social services and more.  With some digging we can identify that people costs (base compensation, overtime, health insurance and social security) make up $135 million of the City of Albany’s 2026 budget, nearly 60% of the budget.  

We wanted to understand the details of City compensation in more detail:

• How do City salaries compare to the median income of Albany’s residents?
• Which departments have the highest salaries?
• How does compensation change, year-to-year, by department and what explains those changes?
• What are the roles that have the highest actual compensation?

We understand that compensation discussions can be contentious.  Our focus is to provide insight on the costs that the City bears as we all examine the City’s current financial crisis.  We’re approaching this article the same way we’ve approached crime reports, parking tickets, and city budget information - we analyze the records and report facts in an unbiased manner. 

In this article we will use the term "Salary" to mean a person's base compensation whether a salaried person or someone paid hourly.  We will use the term "Variable compensation" to mean any O/T, bonuses or similar compensation. 

On February 2nd, 2026 we filed a FOIL request with the city of Albany for records pertaining to the city workers compensation which would include total salary, overtime, additional compensation, department, title, and so forth. The city provided those records on March 31st, 2026.  

Historically this data has been available on the City of Albany's Open Data website, https://data.albanyny.gov/, however the open data website has not been operational since January, hence the FOIL request.

The compensation breakdown for all employees:

* Total compensation - $113,338,621 

* Total base salary compensation - $86,349,522

* Total overtime - $17,178,456

* Total, all other variable compensation - $9,810,643

Next, we examined salaries in each department.  We examined the median salary for each department and compared that to the median household income in Albany. We went with median over average because of the numerous variables that could impact an employee's salary, i.e., position, overtime, bonuses, etc. The records show that the highest median pay (including OT and bonuses), over $146k, was associated with the Albany Police Department Detective Division. The low median pay for APD Patrol/SO is due to positions like School Crossing Officer being grouped in this department/category.

For reference, the median houshold income in Albany is $61,986 per year.  While comparing salaries of individuals to household income (which potentially covers 2+ people) it does provide some context to the compensation numbers.

We analyzed the year-over-year change in total salary for each department. For Albany Police Department (APD), there are several charge codes and titles. For instance, the department may have “Detective Division” listed as part of the record and the “Position Title” lists that employee as “Police Officer”. In other instances the “Position Title” is “Police Officer”, but grouped under “APD Patrol/SO”, which we group into its own category to distinguish the cities designation of a particular specialty, i.e., mounted officers, in the APD. 

The figures below shows the different departments and the change in total salary paid from 2024 to 2025. Next to each department are numbers within parentheses, which represents the change in number of employees for that department, for example “Fire Department (2)” had a total increase in two additional employees paid with their charge code from 2024 to 2025.

People are at the center of the City of Albany’s government, over 1400 full and part-time members of the team that provide public safety, manage the City’s infrastructure, deliver social services and more.  With some digging we can identify that people costs (base compensation, overtime, health insurance and social security) make up $135 million of the City of Albany’s 2026 budget, nearly 60% of the budget.  

We wanted to understand the details of City compensation in more detail:

• How do City salaries compare to the median income of Albany’s residents?
• Which departments have the highest salaries?
• How does compensation change, year-to-year, by department and what explains those changes?
• What are the roles that have the highest actual compensation?

We understand that compensation discussions can be contentious.  Our focus is to provide insight on the costs that the City bears as we all examine the City’s current financial crisis.  We’re approaching this article the same way we’ve approached crime reports, parking tickets, and city budget information - we analyze the records and report facts in an unbiased manner. 

 The Top 50 non-APD salaries. Many of these are associated with the Fire Department; however, there’s more representation from other departments than the unfiltered records. 

In this first pass analysis we answered a few questions:

• How do City salaries compare to the median income of Albany’s residents?
• Which departments have the highest salaries?
• How does compensation change, year-to-year, by department and what explains those changes?
• What are the roles that have the highest actual compensation?

Moving forward, we plan to use the data contained in these records and revisit some of the recent budget stories we’ve published.  We may also further analyze the 2024 and 2025 salary data based on new information or ideas in the coming weeks. If there are any pieces of information that spike your interest, please reach out!