Nearly 300,000 retirees across 18 states collected public pensions of $100,000 or more in 2025, costing taxpayers $36.2 billion.
It’s a notable increase from 2024, when almost 236,000 people earned $30.6 billion.
Key facts: California paid 160,943 of the six-figure pensions — more than half the total. Illinois paid nearly 48,962 of them, and New York gave 32,381.
There were 2,822 retirees with pensions of more than $250,000, including 31 people who earned more than $500,000.
Harris Zeigler, a former psychology professor at New York City’s Hunter College, collected just over $1 million.
The next-highest pension was an $802,521 payment to Johnny Delashaw, a former neurosurgeon at Oregon Health & Science University. Delashaw later went into private practice in Seattle but had his medical license suspended. The State of Washington deemed him an “immediate threat to the public health and safety” of his patients, following dozens of complaints of improper care.
Delashaw has now earned nearly $7 million in pension money since 2017.
The data only includes pensions from Arizona, California, Connecticut, Illinois, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Tennessee, Vermont and Washington.
Twenty-nine states and the federal government have laws barring pension data from being released to the public. Maine, Nevada and West Virginia did not pay any pensions of more than $100,000.
Background: Unsurprisingly, the states paying the most six-figure pensions are typically the states whose pension funds are at risk of insolvency.
Illinois is currently $202 billion away from saving up enough money to pay the pensions it has already promised to current and future retirees, according to Equable. California is short $192.5 billion, and New Jersey will need to save another $95.5 billion.
Summary: Pensions are an effective tool for recruiting public-sector employees, but large payouts increase the risk that retirement systems will eventually run out of cash.
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