1. How does this break down for Clark County employees and how does it compare to previous years?
A: Employees can cash in their unused time off while they still work there or when they leave.
Of the $10 million paid out last year, $7.4 million was cashed out for unused sick time, and $2.5 million for unused vacation.
The $10 million is the lowest amount since we’ve been tracking it — $13 million was paid in 2023, and $11.6 million in 2022.
479 people cashed in their vacation time, 344 people cashed in their sick time, many people collecting both.
The names are redacted but we can see that firefighters have by far the most unused sick, vacation and other time. The three dozen fire employees who got paid for unused PTO account for 20% of all cashed out PTO. On average, they were paid $58,000.
Airport employees also cashed in on their unused PTO — more than 100 people averaged about $16,000.
The DA’s office also had over 50 people collecting an average of $19,000.
The average vacation payout was over $5,000, while sick time averaged $15,000.
At least 25 people cached in on $100,000 of unused time.
The largest cashout were $262,000 to public defender, $226,000 to airport, $224,000 to special public defender, $222,000 to juvenile justice, $208,000 firefighter, $195,000 airport, $191,000 fire, $165,000 and $155,000 public defenders, $150,000 DA
2. How does this compare to how generous the local cities are to their employees?
A: For the cities of Las Vegas, Henderson and North Las Vegas, they collectively paid their employee almost $20 million for unused time off. That’s compared to $21.5 the year before.
Las Vegas paid $6.8 million to over 1,300 employees who didn’t use their time off, including those who left their jobs
North Las Vegas paid $7.5 million to over 800 people. That’s much higher than the $4.5M in 2023 because in 2024, the City had a mandatory sell back for all Teamsters employees who had over 180 hours in their holiday bank. Also in 2024, the City had more high ranking long-term employees retire than in 2023.
Henderson spent $6.7 million on its vacation and sick time payouts for several hundred employees, including over 200 people who left or retired
3. How does this compare to the private sector?
The average worker in the private sector gets 7 days of sick leave per year, compared to 12 days for government employees. Private workers get between 11 and 20 days of vacation depending on how long they’ve worked at their job, government employees get between 13 and 22 days, on average.
And many private employers don’t allow workers to be paid for unused time off, whereas all these local government employers do allow payment of at least some, if not all, unused time.