Oregon’s roughly 38,000 state government workers enjoyed another year of wage growth in 2021, with median pay well above the state’s overall workforce and more employees earning six-figure salaries.

The gains came during a tumultuous time for Oregon workers, as some in the private sector lost jobs and businesses while others enjoyed notable pay raises in the first full fiscal year of the pandemic.

The huge range of state jobs, including everything from cleaning staff and jobless benefit claim adjudicators to park rangers, investment managers and nurses at the state psychiatric hospital, had a median base pay of $64,800 in the fiscal year that ended June 30,2021, according to The Oregonian’s analysis of state pay data.

The median state salary is almost certainly somewhat higher than the analysis found because pay data provided by the state did not indicate which employees worked less than a full year. Median total pay, including overtime and other income such as accrued vacation payouts, equipment allowances and settlements, was $70,200.

In contrast, Oregon’s median wage for all jobs across the private and public sectors in 2021 was $44,900, rounded to the nearest 100, according to Employment Department data.

Oregon’s lowest state worker annual pay rate was a hair over $15 an hour, almost $2 more than the state’s minimum wage in the Portland metropolitan area and $3 more than the minimum in the 18 most rural counties in the state.

At the high end, 5,618 state employees brought home base pay of at least $100,000 in fiscal year 2021, according to state data. That was a 23% increase from the previous year.

When overtime and other pay such as vacation payouts were included, 7,298 state workers earned total pay of at least $100,000 in 2021, a 25% increase from the prior fiscal year.

Pay figures for fiscal year 2021 do not include one-time COVID hazard payments of $1,550 that the state issued to employees required to work in-person during a portion of the first 16 months of the pandemic.

State workers are set to receive 5.6% cost-of-living raises by December, paid for with the $198 million pot for pay increases that lawmakers approved in the 2021 legislative session.

Former House Speaker Tina Kotek, now running in the Democratic primary for governor, said during a debate hosted by the Oregon AFL-CIO that she made sure during her time in the Legislature that lawmakers appropriated generous amounts for pay “bargaining pots” because “we don’t want people leaving public employment because they feel they’re not being treated well.”

Oregon government’s own analysis of state worker compensation in early 2021 determined that, as of July 1, 2020, the state paid employees highly competitive salaries and benefits compared with key areas of the Pacific Northwest job market: 100.2% of market rate, due in large part to benefits including pensions and heavily subsidized health insurance plans, for which state workers paid just $19 a month to insure their whole family.

Since then, state workers received a 3% cost-of-living adjustment and periodic increases in pay rates known as step increases that on average boosted pay by 4.8%.

Oregon government agencies had 38,494 employees from July 2020 through June 2021 who were paid at least the minimum annual base salary of $31,600. Nearly 10,000 additional workers were paid less, meaning they worked some fraction of the year.

The state government’s payroll grew by more than 2,500 workers from the previous fiscal year, although some of the number could represent increased turnover if more workers left partway through the year and were replaced by new hires. State data does not indicate how many months of the year each employee worked.

Most of the increase was at the Oregon Military Department, which had 1,013 more employees than in the previous fiscal year. Stephen Bomar, public affairs director for the agency, said fluctuations in staffing numbers reflect the numbers of Oregon National Guard members called to “state active duty,” at which time they become temporary state employees. Gov. Kate Brown has tapped the guard to help with emergencies ranging from wildfires and floods to the 2021 ice storm and hospital staffing shortages, including ongoing support work at the state psychiatric hospital.

The second largest staffing increase was at the Employment Department, which increased its staffing year-over-year by 703 as the agency worked to catch up on getting jobless benefits out to people who lost work starting early in the pandemic. Oregon’s public health agency boosted its workforce by 308 people and the human services department had 298 more workers than in the previous year.

Overall, the state government spent $3 billion on employee pay in 2021, up 7.1% from fiscal 2020 when it spent $2.8 billion.