Psychiatrists highest-paid Minnesota state employees | The Journal Record

ST. PAUL, Minn. – Minnesota’s highest-paid state authorities workers are psychiatrists.

State payroll information reveals that two state-employed psychiatrists every earned greater than $500,000 in 2021.

Greater than 59,000 individuals work for numerous state companies, boards, Minnesota State schools and universities and the court docket system. Payroll information reviewed by the Star Tribune doesn’t embrace College of Minnesota employees.

The median pay for the 19 psychiatrists listed as full-time state workers final 12 months was about $345,000. Fourteen of the 20 state employees who earned probably the most cash in 2021 have been psychiatrists. A decade earlier, 5 of the 20 top-paid employees labored in psychological and behavioral well being facilities.

The manager director of the Nationwide Alliance on Psychological Sickness Minnesota, Sue Abderholdren, says psychiatrists’ pay stands out within the huge variety of authorities workers that embrace school school, corrections officers and administrative specialists as a result of the state doesn’t rent many different medical doctors.

“We ought to be evaluating their salaries to the medical area and never essentially to different state workers,” she stated. “It’s the one a part of well being care that the state gives. So if the state offered different well being care – most cancers remedy, different kinds of well being care – they wouldn’t be the best paid.”

The typical pay for psychiatrists in private and non-private sectors nationwide was lower than $250,000 in 2021, in line with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.