New Report Shows How Much City Workers in the Sacramento Area Get Paid

California's top financial officer, Controller Malia M. Cohen, released the state's yearly payroll report on Thursday. The report shows how much money city and county workers across California earned in 2025. For the Greater Sacramento region, the data breaks down salaries, total pay, and benefits for employees in cities from Sacramento to South Lake Tahoe. The report helps everyday people understand how their local tax dollars are being spent on government workers.

Across all of California, local governments reported about 751,117 filled jobs and paid out nearly $94.4 billion in total pay in 2025. That is a huge amount of money going to workers who provide services like police, firefighting, parks, and city planning. Two cities in the region — Stockton and Yuba City — were left out of the report because they did not turn in the required pay information on time.

When it comes to average wages in the Greater Sacramento area, Fairfield leads the pack. City workers there earned an average of $115,615 per year. On the other end, Placerville had the lowest average wage at $42,034 per year. Most cities in the region had average wages somewhere between $60,000 and $90,000.

Sacramento is the biggest city in the region and has the most city employees — 5,827 workers in total. The smallest city workforce was in Marysville, which had only 112 city employees. Sacramento had about 52 times more government workers than Marysville, and paid out about 62 times more in total wages. Sacramento's total city pay reached $473,317,838, compared to Marysville's $6,942,358.

Looking at counties, Sacramento County had by far the highest total wages, paying out $647,109,638 to its 8,410 city employees. Solano County came in second with $331,870,147 — nearly half of Sacramento County's total. Smaller counties like Yuba County and El Dorado County had much smaller workforces, with total wages of around $9 million and $37 million each.

City managers are the top hired officials who run day-to-day city operations, and they earned some of the highest pay in local government. The average total wage for city managers across the region was $290,491. Lodi's city manager earned the most at $437,425, while Turlock's earned $109,320, the lowest in the group. Some cities hired new managers during 2025, so their pay figures are split between two people.

Mayors also got paid, though usually much less than city managers. Sacramento's mayor earned the highest wage at $168,189, while Woodland's mayor earned just $3,000 for the whole year. The average pay for a mayor across the listed cities was $23,882, showing that most mayors in smaller cities are not full-time paid positions.

School district workers were part of the report too. The average wage for school district employees in the region was $48,410. Sacramento City Unified School District had the most workers at 7,689, with an average wage of $59,606, while Grass Valley Elementary School District had the lowest average wage at $33,246. These figures cover all staff, from teachers to support workers.

The report also looked at retirement and health benefits paid for employees. Workers in Folsom received the highest average benefit at $30,845 per year, while Marysville employees received the lowest at $13,733 per year. These benefits are an important part of a worker's total pay package, even though they are not money workers take home directly.