From Dan Walters at the Sacramento Bee's Capitol Alert:
California's state government had 9.3 percent more employees in 2011 than it did 10 years earlier - closely tracking overall population growth - but its payroll costs had jumped by 42.4 percent, according to a new Census Bureau report ... In 2001, the state had the "full-time equivalent" of 372,678 employees and was paying them $1.7 billion a month. By 2011, the FTE's, as they are dubbed, had increased to 407,321 and payroll costs to $2.4 billion.The worst offenders, for the record: higher education and the prison system.
