Sunshine lists are meant to provide taxpayers with information on how much governments are paying their highest paid employees. Alberta’s recently released sunshine list shows that last year, 3,511 Alberta government employees were paid more than $107,071 (including salaries and other benefits).Although headline-grabbing, these sunshine lists alone do not provide a complete picture of whether compensation in the Alberta government is too high, too little, or just right. One way to assess the state of government compensation is by comparing it to compensation levels in the private sector for workers with similar characteristics.A recent Fraser Institute study did just that.
