The Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO compiled salary data for 170,000 state employees in 2025.
By Kunle Falayi
The Commonwealth of Virginia employed more than 170,000 people across 212 agencies, colleges and universities, medical facilities, and other institutions in 2025. State employees provide services ranging from running university health systems to cleaning stadiums to policing roads and highways.
Most are full-time employees, although some work part-time. In 2025, they represented more than $11 billion in total public expenditures.
Overall, the median salary of public employees in calendar year 2025 was $61,000, according to the Virginia Center for Investigative Journalism at WHRO’s analysis of public salaries. That’s exactly the Census Bureau’s most recent estimated median income for a full-time worker in the U.S.
If workers making less than $20,000 are excluded, assuming they are part-time employees, the median pay for a state worker is $70,500, according to a VCIJ analysis.
The University of Virginia has the most employees across all public institutions. The university’s main campus, medical center and the UVA College at Wise employed more than 24,000 people last year with a median pay of more than $76,000.
The state has 21 agencies with fewer than 10 employees, including the Virginia Housing Commission, the Behavioral Health Commission and the Commission on Electric Utility. The median pay at these small agencies was $80,000.
VCIJ compiled and analyzed public data from the Virginia Department of Accounts and state universities that handle payroll independently, including the University of Virginia, Old Dominion University, James Madison University, George Mason University, and others. VCIJ obtained the data through multiple public records requests.
The highest-paid employees last year were mostly athletic coaches and university presidents. The University of Virginia’s head football coach, Tony Elliot, took the top spot in Virginia with over $3.4 million in compensation. UVA’s head basketball coach, Ryan Odom, was the state’s second-highest-paid employee, earning nearly $2.4 million.
UVA’s Executive Vice President for Health Affairs, Mitchell Rosner, was the third-highest-paid employee, earning more than $1.6 million.
VCIJ created interactive tools to allow the public to compare pay across different agencies. The tools also allow readers to compare salaries in two major sectors: higher education and health care.
The salary data includes bonuses and overtime paid to most employees at state colleges and universities. Radford University and James Madison University provided only the base salaries of their employees, and Virginia Commonwealth University excluded employees who earned $10,000 or less.
How to use our tools
The first database is a compilation of all public employees who earned salaries in 2025. Some salaries may not reflect earnings for the full year.
Use the interactive database to search for any Virginia public employee by name, agency or position. Clicking an employee’s name reveals a distribution of all salaries within each agency, allowing readers to see where that employee’s pay falls within their organization.
The two other visualizations show colleges and universities as well as healthcare agencies separately. This allows readers to compare salaries within each organization in those sectors. After clicking a name or row, the table displays how the employee’s salary compares with others.
The visualizations are interactive. Hover over charts to see additional details, click highlighted elements to explore the data, and use the search and filter tools to compare agencies, occupations and salaries.
Reach out if you have any suggestions on how to improve these tools or any information you would like to see.
Reach Kunle Falayi at kunle.falayi@vcij.org.