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Public Payroll & City Salary Data, Made Searchable

City payroll is public — but "public" and "usable" are not the same thing. The data exists as quarterly files, one record per employee per period, with no easy way to follow a person across years or roll a department up into a single number. CompensationAtlas turns that raw payroll into something you can actually search.

For a campaign, a council office, a legislative staffer, or a union research desk, the question is rarely "does this data exist?" It almost always does. The real question is how many hours it takes to get from a folder of raw records to a defensible, quotable figure. CompensationAtlas closes that gap for Philadelphia city payroll, quarter by quarter, from 2016 to the present.

What CompensationAtlas actually holds

Every record in the city's published payroll carries an employee's name, job title, department, and pay. CompensationAtlas connects those quarterly snapshots into a continuous, searchable index so you can move through the data the way a person actually thinks about it:

• By person — pull an individual's title, department, and pay, and see how each has changed since 2016.
• By title — compare everyone holding the same role across departments, not just one office's version of it.
• By department — roll a whole agency up into headcount and total compensation, then break it back down.
• By actual earnings, not just rate — see where overtime and other pay lift what someone was paid well above their listed annual salary.

Rate versus reality

The single most useful distinction in payroll data is the one most spreadsheets flatten: the difference between an employee's annual base rate and what they were actually paid. A position listed at one salary can, after overtime and premium pay, cost the city something quite different. CompensationAtlas keeps both numbers side by side, so you can see which roles and which departments consistently run hot on overtime — and quantify it rather than gesture at it.

The value isn't the salary number. It's being able to stand behind it — because it traces straight back to the city's own record.

Careers, not snapshots

Because the underlying records reach back to 2016, CompensationAtlas can show a career arc rather than a single frame: a promotion, a transfer between departments, a jump in pay grade, a stretch of heavy overtime. That continuity matters when you are trying to understand how a role evolved, whether raises tracked responsibilities, or how a department's staffing shifted across administrations and budget cycles.

Who uses it, and for what

The workflows tend to cluster around a few jobs-to-be-done:

• Hearing and oversight prep — walk in with department-level compensation and overtime already pulled, so questions are specific instead of fishing.
• Wage and equity checks — compare pay across people holding the same title, or track how a department's total compensation has moved.
• Accountability and press work — build a claim you can cite, because the figure is sourced to the public payroll record it came from.

In every case, the point of CompensationAtlas is not to editorialize. It is to remove the days of manual reconciliation between you and a number you can defend. The interpretation is yours; the sourcing is built in.

That distinction matters more than it sounds. An office that spends its week cleaning payroll exports has no time left for judgment, and a figure assembled under deadline pressure is exactly the kind that falls apart under scrutiny. By handling the assembly — the ingestion, the connection across quarters, the reconciliation of rate against actual pay — CompensationAtlas moves your effort to where it counts: choosing which numbers matter and what they mean.

Sourced by design

ALKARTIS treats explainability as a requirement, not a feature. Every salary, overtime figure, and department total in CompensationAtlas traces back to the underlying public payroll record — so when someone in a hearing or a newsroom asks "where did that number come from?", you have an answer. This is what ALKARTIS means by turning data into intelligence you can trust: fragmented public records, connected and made checkable.

Philadelphia today, more cities on the way

CompensationAtlas is live for Philadelphia city payroll now. ALKARTIS is expanding city by city, so additional jurisdictions will come online over time — but we describe only what is live, and today that is Philadelphia. If broader or programmatic access matters to your team, API access is part of the Enterprise tier; talk to our team about what that looks like.

Frequently asked questions

Where does the salary data come from?

It comes from the City of Philadelphia's own published employee payroll records, which run from 2016 to the present. CompensationAtlas structures and connects those quarterly records so you can search them by name, title, or department — and every figure traces back to the public record it came from.

Can I see overtime, not just base salary?

Yes. The payroll records distinguish the annual base rate from what an employee was actually paid, so you can see where overtime and other pay push actual earnings well above the listed rate — position by position and quarter by quarter.

Is a person's full career history available?

Because the records go back to 2016, CompensationAtlas can show how an individual's title, department, and pay have moved over time — promotions, transfers, and raises — as a continuous history rather than a single snapshot.

Is this only Philadelphia?

Today, yes — ALKARTIS is live in Philadelphia, and CompensationAtlas covers Philadelphia city payroll. We are expanding city by city, so additional jurisdictions will come online over time.

Can I cite what I find in a hearing or a memo?

Yes. Every number in CompensationAtlas is sourced to the underlying public payroll record, so figures are checkable and defensible when you put them in a hearing question, a press statement, or an internal brief.