Examining MBTA salaries
Project description
MBTA Salary Analysis
Year 2015 data thanks to Matthew Rocheleau, the Boston Globe staff reporter on the 22 Dec 2015 MBTA overtime article.
- extract text tables from PDF using Poppler
pdftotext
- load with Pandas
- look for interesting aspects of the data.
For example, in 2014, the top MBTA earner was a Technician with an estimated $145 K of overtime on top of an $89 K salary. Excessive overtime can be a concern for worker performance and safety in any field, with possible drastic consequences for the public when working in sensitive areas like transportation and medicine.
The Washingtonian published a 9 Dec 2015 article by Luke Mullins and Michael Gaynor that explores at length issues with WMATA and overtime abuses.
Backpay is excluded as it represents a retroactive increase in base salary for the previous year. Backpay is last year's pay, paid out this year.
Examples
We currently have 2013-2015 salary data. Other trend analyses may find it useful to request prior years data.
2015 MBTA Salary
MBTAsalary EMP-2015-Gross-Bpay-Ovt.xlsx 2015
yields plots and the output:
Highest earning MBTA staff $256080 in 2015 was a Foreperson,Section, including estimated $171257 overtime.
type | max | median | 90th | subtot | num |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
signal | 182049 | 117083 | 151384 | > 2e+07 | > 157 |
maint | 256080 | > 97309 | 134881 | > 2e+08 | 1743 |
ops | 145266 | > 96538 | 113948 | > 1e+07 | > 128 |
police | 203553 | > 93684 | 136959 | > 3e+07 | > 271 |
heavy | 178438 | > 80498 | 103964 | > 5e+07 | > 678 |
bus-ft | 120281 | > 75542 | > 91287 | > 1e+08 | 1304 |
subway | 158950 | > 73563 | > 94860 | > 4e+07 | > 628 |
bus-pt | > 54738 | > 40934 | > 49124 | > 2e+07 | > 410 |
rest | 231589 | > 87497 | 122225 | > 1e+08 | 1149 |
all | 256080 | > 82319 | 118860 | > 5e+08 | 6468 |
2014 MBTA Salary
MBTAsalary Wages2014.txt 2014
yields plots and the output:
Highest earning MBTA staff $235194 in 2014 was a Technician,Power Equip, including estimated $145401 overtime.
type | max | median | 90th | subtot | num |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
signal | 179689 | 110775 | 127210 | > 2e+07 | > 155 |
police | 221910 | 107261 | 165080 | > 3e+07 | > 259 |
maint | 235194 | > 95772 | 131344 | > 2e+08 | 1727 |
ops | 138506 | > 93504 | 115208 | > 1e+07 | > 131 |
heavy | 224458 | > 90492 | 120647 | > 6e+07 | > 670 |
bus-ft | 196809 | > 88447 | 109504 | > 1e+08 | 1337 |
subway | 185242 | > 84203 | 111710 | > 4e+07 | > 576 |
bus-pt | > 66435 | > 33326 | > 52231 | > 1e+07 | > 345 |
rest | 220000 | > 86463 | 129061 | > 1e+08 | 1132 |
all | 235194 | > 89251 | 123618 | > 5e+08 | 6332 |
MBTA 2013 Salary
MBTAsalary "FOIA 14-11 final.txt" 2013
yields plots and the output:
Highest earning MBTA staff $238770 in 2013 was a General Manager
type | max | median | 90th | subtot | num |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
signal | 164161 | 109078 | 122121 | > 1e+07 | > 139 |
police | 205400 | 108173 | 162941 | > 3e+07 | > 245 |
maint | 209113 | > 87132 | 113655 | > 1e+08 | 1705 |
ops | 127287 | > 82337 | > 98121 | > 1e+07 | > 131 |
heavy | 154684 | > 72266 | > 99978 | > 5e+07 | > 654 |
bus-ft | 192440 | > 69327 | > 87284 | > 9e+07 | 1279 |
subway | 133214 | > 66729 | > 87589 | > 3e+07 | > 517 |
bus-pt | > 53263 | > 34434 | > 42247 | > 1e+07 | > 358 |
rest | 238770 | > 78120 | 112847 | > 9e+07 | 1098 |
all | 238770 | > 75818 | 108951 | > 5e+08 | 6126 |
Obtaining Salary Data
You will need to download and convert the salary data first. Each year's format is a little different.
2015 Salary Data
We obtained this data from Matthew Rocheleau, the Boston Globe staff reporter on the 22 Dec 2015 MBTA overtime article. We anticipate a request for the whole year 2015 data once we're into 2016.
2014 Salary Data
- Download 2014 MBTA salary data
- Extract text from PDF:
pdftotext -layout Wages2014.pdf
2013 Salary Data
- Download 2013 MBTA salary data
- Extract text from PDF:
pdftotext -layout "FOIA 14-11 final.pdf"
- The last three lines of this .txt file are missing a space between the salary and "2013". Just open in a text editor and manually add one additional space before 2013 in these last three lines.
Project details
Release history Release notifications | RSS feed
Download files
Download the file for your platform. If you're not sure which to choose, learn more about installing packages.