[gperkins978]

In the US, most municipalities will publish each employee's compensation every year. You can literally look them up by name.

[zdp7]

I think this is a little off, in that the data isn't coming from the various government entities or at least isn't required to be provided. I know at least in California most of the info is gathered by third parties using FOIA requests. It's also not associated with a SSN and just typically gives the annual compensation with limited categories. The Work Number on the other hand gets paycheck level details. Considering the data would be useless without a unique identifier, SSN is sent with it. Using The Work Number data, you could see pay period granularity changes to their compensation.

[olyjohn]

Here is what Washington State does:

https://fiscal.wa.gov/Staffing/Salaries

Literally every single State employee's salary is listed here.

[TeaBrain]

That is exactly what they are saying. The public records typically contain annual compensation, not the detailed breakdown available via Work Number.