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So can you calculate what the average salary is for each employee?
Applying the FY 2027 budget's 4 percent raise to MLive's 2026 payroll data, Kent County's average salary would rise from $70,133 to roughly $72,900 per employee.
Why it matters: The pay bump is the county's headline investment in staff retention, so the per-employee figure shows what that commitment costs in real dollars.
- MLive's FOIA-obtained 2026 payroll lists 2,199 employees and a $154 million salary roll; the average salary was $70,133 and the median $70,699.
- The FY 2027 budget — approved Aug. 28, 2026 — gives all employees a 4 percent raise, which would push the average to about $72,938 and the median to about $73,527.
- Those figures are skewed by seasonal, intern, cadet, retiree-rehire and per-diem positions; the budget's 'near 2,082' headcount refers to budgeted positions, a different measure than the actual payroll count.
Room for disagreement
- The roughly 2,199-person payroll from MLive's data and the county's own budgeted headcount of about 2,082 don't match, so a straight average-salary-per-headcount calculation understates what the county actually pays per budgeted FTE.
AI-generated with web search — may be wrong. Check the linked sources.
