Transit pay by agency

How to read it. Average pay is wages, overtime and paid leave for a year, per full-time-equivalent employee: pay per hour worked, times the hours the agency's own full-time staff work. Part-time hours count as a fraction of a job, so they do not pull the average down. "Similar agencies" is the median of the peers shown on each agency's page. It is left blank when fewer than three of them file figures that pass the checks.

Operator hours are hours actually worked in a year by a full-time operator, so leave is already out and overtime is in. A 40-hour week every week of the year, with no leave at all, is 2,080; figures above that are in bold. NTD records the hours, not the reason for them.

What is not here. Service bought from contractors, whose staff are in neither the wages nor the headcount. Rural and smaller agencies, which file one expense total. And agencies whose filings fall outside plausible bounds: fewer than ten full-time staff, full-time hours outside 1,200 to 3,000 a year, or average pay outside $20,000 to $250,000. NTD reports pensions and health coverage as one benefits figure, so they cannot be separated.

A lower average does not always mean lower pay. An agency that has just hired many people brings them on at the bottom of its scale, and the average falls with no one's pay cut. The agency's labor contracts tell the two apart; NTD's totals cannot.