Government spending

Kansas has nearly the highest number of local government employees per resident, compared to other states. These are local government employees only. State and federal government employees are not included. The source of this data is the United States Census Bureau. I've gathered it and created an interactive visualization. Additionally, using each state’s population for each year, I’ve also computed the annual payroll on a per-resident basis and the number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees per thousand residents. For all local government employees, Kansas had 50.55 employees per thousand residents in 2016, higher than all states (and areas) but the…

Looking at the number of state government employees in proportion to population, Kansas has many compared to other states. Each year the United States Census Bureau surveys federal, state, and local government civilian employees. I've gathered this data and present it in an interactive visualization using several views and supplementary calculations. The Census Bureau collects both counts of employees and payroll dollars. Comparisons based on the number of employees are useful, bypassing issues such as differing costs of living and salaries in general. Considering all government functions and state government employees only, Kansas had 18.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) employees per…