A new report released by the Idaho Controller Brandon Woolf shows that after an employment slide in recessionary years, state government is growing again.
The report also reveals which positions in state government receive the highest wages. In all, 253 workers bring home more than Gov. Butch Otter’s $119,000-year salary, down from 266 last year.
Boise State University’s new football coach, Bryan Harsin, nabbed the top spot as Idaho’s best-compensated worker, bringing home just more than $1 million annually. The school’s basketball coach, Leon Rice, grabbed second place, earning $480,272 each year.
BSU workers, including university president Bob Kustra, hold 16 of the first 20 spots in the breakdown of Idaho’s best-paid employees.
According to the 2014 Rainbow Report, Idaho now employs 24,979 government workers. That tally checks in 269 higher than 2013.
The number also represents a recovering—and steadily swelling—state government. In 2011, one of the tough budget years during the near-dead economy, Idaho employed 24,140 workers, a low point in the last decade.
The state employed 25,411 workers in 2008, the high point of the last decade.
The state’s compensation costs hit $1.41 billion in 2013, the highest total in the last decade. In 2009, the state compensated workers $1.4 billion, the second-highest figure in the last 10 years.
Those numbers include gross wages, taxes and insurance costs.
