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Labor's Share of the Budget

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Visuals in this post: Labor's Share of the Budget Growth by Spending Line Raises vs. the Reserve Overtime Pension Contributions Union Density
data.nycuriosity.com › Public Sector Unions 2026 › Labor's Share of the Budget
Budget September 2026

Labor is half the budget, and its share has been falling

Salaries, overtime, pensions, health insurance and other fringe benefits were 54.1% of the adopted expense budget in fiscal 2017 and 50.9% in fiscal 2027. Personnel spending grew 38% over those ten years. The whole budget grew 47%.

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Personnel costs fell from 54% to 51% of the adopted budget in ten years

Personal services (salaries, overtime, pensions, health insurance and other fringe) as a share of New York City's adopted expense budget, fiscal 2017 to 2027.

Source: NYC Open Data, Expense Budget (mwzb-yiwb), adopted publication for each fiscal year Note: The vertical axis starts at 48%. Adopted budgets carry only reserved raises for unsettled contracts, so fiscal 2027 includes 1.25% raises.

Personnel spending rose from $43.4 billion to $60.0 billion over these years, a 38% increase, while the dataset's total rose from $80.3 billion to $117.8 billion, a 47% increase. The budget's growth came from elsewhere.

Method: For each fiscal year, the adopted-budget publication in the Expense Budget dataset was summed by the personal service indicator. The dataset total is lower than the City's headline budget figure, so shares here are shares of the dataset total.

Sources: NYC Open Data, Expense Budget.