By Hank Russell
The Empire Center for Public Policy issued a report finding that overtime costs for state employees rose significantly last year, exceeding $1 billion.
Based on data from SeeThroughNY, overtime pay jumped 21% at a cost of $1.64 billion. The state employee who collected the most overtime pay was Juan Soto, a lieutenant at the Cayuga Correctional Facility.
Soto, whose base pay is $128,826 a year, earned a whopping $442,633 in overtime last year, bringing home a total salary of $583,015. In fact, Soto was one of 93 correctional officers with the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision (DOCCS) collecting more than $200,000 in overtime. According to the Empire Center, overtime at DOCCS rose 54% year over year, with employees averaging over $100,000 in total pay.
Despite the increase, DOCCS was not the highest-paid agency. That was the New York State Police, which had the highest pay at $128,893 for its 7,519 employees. The agency saw a 14% year-over-year rise in overtime pay to $125 million.
The think tank also found that 102 state employees — including the DOCCS officers — took in over $200,000 in overtime pay. That is way above the 2024 total of 24 workers. Moreover, the number of employees earning fix-figure overtime payments shot up almost 150% from 610 in 2024 to 1,504 last year. As a result, 104 workers earned more than $500,000 in total pay.
The data also showed that 2,450 state workers made more money that Governor Kathy Hochul, who earns $250,000 a year. Additionally, 8,406 employees collected more in overtime than their annual salary, enabling some to quadruple their total pay.
The other agencies that had six-figure average pay, according to the Empire Center, were the Council on the Arts ($107,250 for 34 employees), the Financial Control Board ($106,984 for 12 employees), Department of Financial Services ($101,774 for 1,579 employees), Department of Employee Relations ($101,403 for 91 employees), and the Lt. Governor’s Office ($101,010 for 4 employees).
As a result of the spike in overtime payments, the state’s payroll increased 7% from $19.4 billion in 2024 to $22.5 billion last year.
The Empire Center pointed out that state employees are paid overtime at different rates depending on their work schedule and circumstances. Standard overtime is paid at time-and-a-half (1.5 times base pay), while premium rates include double-time (2 times base pay rate) for shifts exceeding 16 hours and double-time-and-a-half (2.5 times base pay) for certain special conditions.
Research was conducted by Abdullah Ar Rafee, who is the think tank’s data manager.