Salaries for Iowa’s state employees have grown since 2020, but so has the wage gap between male and female employees.
For fiscal year 2025, the most recent for which salary data is available, the median income for a state of Iowa employee was $56,545, a 6% increase over the prior year, according to a Des Moines Register analysis of Iowa’s State Salary Book.
But the median income for a male employee ($61,474) was more than $8,000 higher than the median income for a female employee ($52,825). And that gap has widened over the past five years.
In 2020, the median male state employee made around $4,000 more than the median female state employee — a 7% gap, compared with 14% in the most recent fiscal year.
The state’s gender pay gap in fiscal year 2025 was roughly in line with that of the U.S. as a whole, according to analysis from the Pew Research Center.
There were nearly 70,000 employees listed in Iowa’s state salary book for fiscal year 2025. Positions go beyond those directly involved with governance and include, for example, corrections officers, public broadcasting employees and faculty and staff at the state’s public universities.
About three in five state employees are women, but collectively they earned only slightly more than half of the money the state paid out in salaries last year.
A small part of this is because of the hefty salaries paid to the state’s highest earners, such as nearly $7 million for University of Iowa football head coach Kirk Ferentz.
That’s why median income is preferred for comparing salary data — it helps mitigate the effect of very large wage earners.
But on the scale of the state’s more than $4 billion salary budget, Ferentz’s compensation barely makes a dent.
Put another way, Iowa could hire 643 more Kirk Ferentzes with the money it spends paying the rest of its employees. (It’s unclear what impact this would have on football in the state, but other state services would likely suffer in this scenario.)
The state’s wage gap is also evident when directly comparing the salaries of men and women with identical titles in state government.
Men have a higher median incomes than women with the same titles in 60% of positions where there at least 10 employees of each gender and a median income above $10,000.
Moreover, positions where women earn more than men tend to be clustered toward to the lower end of the income spectrum and have fewer employees overall.
In none of the 15 positions with the highest median incomes did women have a higher median incomes than men.
Few of state’s highest earners are women
That’s in line with what can be seen with a quick glance at the state’s highest-paid employees: There aren’t many women near the top of the list.
Despite women comprising 60% of the employees on the state’s payroll, just 17 are among the state’s top 100 earners.
Women hold a slightly larger share of positions in state government that are paid hourly as opposed to annually salaried — a gap in its own right — and many of the most lucrative positions, earning half a million dollars per year or more, remain male-dominated.
But the state also is entering an unusual transition at the top of its payroll. Some of the Iowa’s highest earners no longer will be on the state’s payroll in coming years. That includes some longtime coaches at each of Iowa’s public universities.
Together, the five had 93 seasons of tenure at their positions and earned a collective $10,391,840 in fiscal year 2025.
The high-profile names leaving the state’s payroll aren’t limited to athletics.
Adam Steen left his $200,000 role as the state’s Director of Administrative Services to run for governor — a position that will be open after Gov. Kim Reynolds announced last year she would not run for re-election.
These employees will all be replaced, of course, at varying salaries relative to what they previously earned.
But the upheaval at the top of the state’s payroll is notable perhaps most because of how long many of those names had stayed on the list.
Next year’s state payroll may look significantly different.
Tim Webber is a data visualization specialist for the Register. Reach him at twebber@registermedia.com and on Twitter at @HelloTimWebber.
View the salaries of all state employees
The compensation earned by all employees of the state is public record. The database below shows the fiscal year 2025 earnings of all state employees, including those who left their positions mid-year. The database includes each employee’s name, department and position title, as well as their base wage and pay rate, their compensation for travel and other related expenditures, and their total gross pay for the fiscal year.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Salaries of Iowa public employees grow. So does state’s gender pay gap
Reporting by Tim Webber, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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