Finally a tool to analyze the "Sunshine Lists"

[jsmth]

We all know about the Sunshine List - the names of Ontario's public sector employees that earn over $100,000 annually.

Finally there is a free to use, publicly available tool to analyze all sorts of things about the list. My friend is big into technology and data and he told me about this site a few days ago.

What it does:
1) Searchable database of each Sunshine List dating back to 1996. (569,000 records)

2) Compares average raises by sector, employer or even position. (For instance, what is the average raise for LCBO employees each year? Or nurses? Or police officers? What percent of city managers got a raise in any particular year?)

3) Find top earners by sector, employer or position. You can also find the top increases/decreases in salary. Pretty neat.

4) There are also some graphs, like a scatter plot of raise vs. salary.

Check it out:

http://www.ontariosunshinelist.com

p.s. Are there sunshine lists for other provinces? Does a tool like this exist for them?

[Michael Hardner]

I was tangentially part of a project to monitor government expenses ... an 'open source' project along the same lines.

I think the Sunshine list is increasingly meaningless in the big picture, but if it gets people to start using these types of tools across the board then I support this exercise.

[Guest]

What's wrong with earning over $100000 annually?

[Michael Hardner]

Nothing.

[cybercoma]

What's wrong with earning over $100000 annually?

What's wrong with paying other public sector employees more?

Like MH said. Nothing.

But conservatives seem to like to play on populist sentiment that we pay too much in taxes because we have to pay people's wages.

[Michael Hardner]

I like the idea of analytics tools... but I'd rather have it used to look at revenue/disbursements over all.

[Topaz]

On "Focus Ontario" they had the head of the union on, and he said that the statement that provincial workers make too much money is not true. He said the average wage is around $40,000 yearly and it the managers that make the big bucks and in his opinion there is too many of them and they never get hit, like the union worker does and I think the sunshine list would be made up of managers and not union workers.