Connecticut Payroll & Pension - State Employee and Retiree Pay

Two registers of Connecticut state pay, straight from the State's open data:

• Payroll - 29.9 million rows, calendar 2010 to today (the source's own title says 2015; the file opens in 2010). One row per employee per pay period.
• Pension - 8.15 million rows, 2014 to today. One row per retiree per monthly pension payment.

Low cost

From $0.00005 per record, down to $0.00003 at Gold. Pay only for the records you actually receive - both registers stay queryable, you are never billed for the scan behind it.

What you get

Payroll (corpus="payroll", the default):

• The agency, the sub-department and the State's own job code
• The union and the full-time / part-time split
• Original hire date and termination date
• The whole money breakdown: annual rate, bi-weekly rate, salaries and wages, overtime, fringe, other pay, and total gross
• The employee's home city, ZIP and state

Pension (corpus="pension"):

• The retirement plan and tier - SERS, Teachers, MERS, Judges
• Why they are drawing - service, hazardous duty, disability, vested rights
• The bargaining unit, the retirement type code
• The pension wage paid that period
• The retiree's residence state (5.9M still in Connecticut; 805K in Florida)

Filter it

• By name - lastName="Smith" works on both registers.
• By agency - agency="University of Connecticut" (5.2M payroll rows), "Correction" (2.5M), "Transportation".
• By job - jobCode="CorrectionOfficer".
• By union - on either register.
• By retirement type - retireTypeDescription="Hazardous Duty".
• Where retirees live - retirementState="FL".
• By year, pay-date range, last-N-days and amount range.

Or roll it up

Set mode=aggregate for a server-side count by agency, department, job indicator, check status or year on payroll; by tier, bargaining unit, retirement type or residence state on pension. Every group comes back - this mode is not cut off by maxResults.

Example inputs

Overtime at the Department of Correction - payroll rows for one agency.

{ "corpus": "payroll", "agency": "Correction", "year": 2025, "maxResults": 50 }

A retiree's pension payments - name filters work on both registers.

{ "corpus": "pension", "lastName": "DUGAN", "maxResults": 50 }

Pensions drawn on hazardous duty

{ "corpus": "pension", "retireTypeDescription": "Hazardous Duty", "maxResults": 50 }

Where retirees live - one row per state.

{ "mode": "aggregate", "corpus": "pension", "groupBy": "retirementState" }

Then answer real questions

• What does overtime cost the Department of Correction in a year?
• Which agency grew headcount, and which shrank?
• What is the age of the State's pension payroll by tier?
• How many Connecticut retirees draw a pension while living in another state?
• Who is a named individual state employee, and what are they paid?

Notes on the data, from the source

• The two registers cannot be joined to each other. Both carry a hashed employee id, and they are different hash spaces - sampling five ids from each and cross-querying both ways gives 0 of 10 matches, verified. They are offered side by side because they describe the same workforce at two ends of a career, not because they link.
• Department is only populated from 2024 onward (5.0M of 29.9M payroll rows, 17%). For 2023 and earlier it is entirely blank while agency is complete - use agency for a filter that spans the whole register.
• Refunds and adjustments are in here. 12,793 payroll rows are negative - the deepest is -$4,705,475.86, and in calendar 2026 alone they run to -$124,657.73 across 339 rows. Pension wage reaches -$404,282.72 (4,959 negative rows). Leave the minimum amount blank to include them, or set 0.01 for payments only.
• checkStatus="R" marks 11,010 payroll rows as reversals - payments that were taken back.
• The termination date is free text in two shapes (2025-05-10 and 2023-08-11 00:00:00.0), exactly as the State holds it.
• Some retirees are listed as UNDISCLOSED - that is the State's own redaction, not a missing value.

Example output

One pension payment - corpus=pension, lastName=DUGAN returns payments like the one below:

{
  "platform": "ct-payroll-pension",
  "source": "ct-open-pension",
  "mode": "rows",
  "groupKey": "",
  "groupCount": "",
  "groupBy": "",
  "firstName": "CARIANN",
  "middleInitial": "P",
  "lastName": "DUGAN",
  "nameSuffix": "",
  "employerAgency": "",
  "employerDepartment": "",
  "deptId": "",
  "jobCode": "",
  "employeeClass": "",
  "jobIndicator": "",
  "fullPart": "",
  "unionDescription": "Correctional Officers (NP-4)",
  "annualRate": "",
  "biWeeklyRate": "",
  "salariesWages": "",
  "overtime": "",
  "fringe": "",
  "otherPay": "",
  "totalGross": "",
  "sersAmount": "",
  "arpAmount": "",
  "teachersAmount": "",
  "judgesAmount": "",
  "checkNumber": "",
  "checkDate": "2026-08-31T00:00:00.000",
  "checkOption": "",
  "checkStatus": "",
  "originalHireDate": "",
  "terminationDate": "",
  "city": "",
  "postal": "",
  "state": "NC",
  "tierDescription": "SERS - TIER2",
  "bargainingUnit": "08",
  "retireType": "7",
  "retireTypeDescription": "Hazardous Duty",
  "pensionWage": "6491.77",
  "payEndDate": "2026-08-31T00:00:00.000",
  "corpus": "pension",
  "calendarYear": "",
  "fiscalYear": "",
  "balanceYear": "2026",
  "sourceUpdatedAt": "2026-09-02"
}

mode=aggregate, corpus=payroll, groupBy=agency - the largest employers, largest first:

University of Connecticut     5.2M
Correction                    2.5M