Government salary transparency for Texas — how we built it

Texas Public Salary Database

Where do your tax dollars actually go?

OpenPayrolls is an independent, plain-English database of 6,000 Texas public employee salaries — searchable by name, job title, agency, and city. Built from open records. Free to browse. Citation-ready URLs for every page.

6,000EmployeesReal salary records
100AgenciesState + university
824Job titlesDistinct classifications
$677MAnnual payrollSample aggregate

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1,414 employees · avg $99,978

HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES COMMISSION

Top pay: $345,250 · Common roles: ELIGIBILITY ADVISOR II, DIRECT SUPPORT PROF II, DIRECT SUPPORT PROF III

1,063 employees · avg $61,733

TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Top pay: $319,813 · Common roles: CORRECTIONAL OFFICER III, CORRECTIONAL OFFICER IV, SGT OF CORREC OFFCRS

489 employees · avg $95,276

TEXAS DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORTATION

Top pay: $344,000 · Common roles: TRANS MAINT SPEC II, TRANS MAINT SPEC III, DEPUTY DIRECTOR II

365 employees · avg $100,567

DEPARTMENT OF PUBLIC SAFETY

Top pay: $390,908 · Common roles: TROOPER, LICENSE AND PERMIT SPEC II, SERGEANT, DPS

341 employees · avg $65,888

DEPARTMENT OF FAMILY AND PROTECTIVE SERVICES

Top pay: $300,000 · Common roles: CHILD PROTECTIVE SVCS SPEC I, CHILD PROTECTIVE SVCS SPEC IV, CHILD PROTECTIVE SVCS SPEC II

323 employees · avg $207,683

COMPTROLLER'S - JUDICIARY

Top pay: $235,000 · Common roles: DISTRICT JUDGE, ACTIVE, CRIMINAL DISTRICT ATTORNEY, JUDGE, RETIRED

250 employees · avg $270,326

TEACHER RETIREMENT SYSTEM

Top pay: $850,005 · Common roles: Ext Pub Investment Director, Director, Private Analytics, Chief Compliance & Gen Cnsl

144 employees · avg $124,430

OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL

Top pay: $338,074 · Common roles: ASST ATTORNEY GENERAL VII, CHILD SUPPORT OFFCR III, CHILD SUPPORT OFFCR II

122 employees · avg $72,020

TEXAS WORKFORCE COMMISSION

Top pay: $234,500 · Common roles: WORKFORCE DEV SPECIALIST I, CUSTOMER SERVICE REP II, PROGRAM SPECIALIST IV

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What is OpenPayrolls Texas?

OpenPayrolls is an independent, public-interest project that publishes Texas state government payroll data in a format ordinary Texans can actually read. The dataset behind this site lists tens of thousands of employees of Texas state agencies, universities, and public boards — the people whose salaries are paid out of state appropriations and tax revenue. We did not collect this data ourselves. It is published in the public interest under Texas open-records law and is mirrored from the Texas Tribune's Government Salaries Explorer.

Most public salary databases bury this information behind clunky search forms or lock it inside spreadsheets that require a download. We wanted something simpler: a fast, browsable, citation-ready website where every agency, every job title, and every employee has a real, durable URL. Linking to a name, a title, or an agency should just work — for journalists, watchdogs, students, and anyone curious about how their tax dollars are spent.

Use the search above to find a person or department by name. Browse by agency if you want a high-level view of who works where, by job title if you want to compare what people in the same role earn across agencies, by city if you want a metro-by-metro view, or by category if you want to drill down into a sector like universities or public safety. Read our methodology page for caveats about what these numbers do and do not represent — annualized pay is a snapshot, not a paycheck, and there are honest reasons two people in the same job title can show very different totals.