Waste of the Day: Almost 1,000 Federal Workers Outearned the President

Topline: There were 956 federal employees who made more than the president of the United States in 2024. It’s the highest number by far in OpenTheBooks’ payroll records that date back to 2010.

How does a federal employee out-earn the President?

Key facts: The president’s salary has been $400,000 since 2001. 

Last year, 939 of the employees who outearned the president were medical officers at the Veterans Health Administration, which provides care for 9.1 million veterans across 1,380 facilities. Four of the employees are listed as dentists.

Micah Nix, an emergency room doctor with the Indian Health Service, outearned the president, as did one unnamed employee at the Bureau of Prisons.

There were also 15 doctors at the National Institutes of Health earning more than $400,000, including the four highest paid employees in the entire federal workforce. Gary Gibbons, director of the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, took home $519,246, breaking his own record for the highest federal salary in U.S. history. 

Dr. Anthony Fauci once held the record with a $480,654 salary in 2022. Gibbons surpassed that with a $492,643 salary in 2023 and has now become the only federal employee to earn more than $500,000.

The 956 employees are spread across 48 different states. California is home to 162 of them. Florida is in second place with 59, and North Carolina has 50. Five of the top six highest paid federal employees work in Maryland.

The count of 956 employees does not include an additional 36 that earned exactly $400,000 — the same as the president.

From Trump to Biden, the trend explodes

The count also does not include the Tennessee Valley Authority, which is owned by the federal government but receives no taxpayer funding.

Its CEO Jeffrey Lyash made $10.5 million last year.

Search all federal, state and local government salaries and vendor spending with the AI search bot, Benjamin, at OpenTheBooks.com. 

Background: It was once rare to outearn the president. Only three federal employees made more than $400,000 in 2019: Fauci and Gibbons at the NIH and John York at the Indian Health Service.

By the year 2022 there were 248 federal workers outearning the president. That roughly doubled to 492 employees in 2023, which more than doubled again to the current total of 956.

Inflation is certainly a factor, but top federal salaries have been increasing far faster than inflation during the past five years. A $400,000 salary in 2024 was the equivalent of earning $325,691 in 2019. But only 60 federal employees earned $325,691 or more in 2019.

Summary: Federal doctors are performing important work, but the trend of rising salaries is still concerning. How long will it be before federal workers in other professions are also outearning the president?

The #WasteOfTheDay is brought to you by the forensic auditors at OpenTheBooks.com.

This article was originally published by RCI and made available via RealClearWire.