The picture revealed by the study on super-salaries in public authorities conducted by researcher Sergio Guedes Reis for the civil society organizations República.org and Movimento Pessoa à Frente is not surprising, but it is still shocking. Total Brazilian spending on payments above the salary cap stipulated in the constitution reached at least R$20 billion between August 2024 and July of this year – or two-thirds of what the government seeks to achieve next year’s fiscal target. By all measures, Brazil is the country that spends the most on the civil service elite in a sample of 11 countries.
Brazil’s spending on supersalaries – about US$8 billion according to approved conversion standards – is 21 times what Argentina spends, the second country with the largest number of oversalaries. Then come the United States and Mexico, the only two countries whose expenditures exceed $200 million. France, Italy, Colombia, Portugal and Germany spend less than US$4.2 million, about 0.05% of the Brazilian total. The distortion is so large that exceeding the constitutional ceiling paid in Brazil to about 40,000 government employees is enough to finance a monthly salary of 2,200 Brazilian reals for about 9.1 million Brazilians – or 18.8% of employees with official contracts.
- Above the ceiling: The study shows that Brazil tops the ranking of super salaries in the civil service and spending reaches R$ 20 billion in one year
The salary cap stipulated in the constitution for all civil servants – the salary of the Minister of the Supreme Court – is equivalent to an annual salary of R$630,000. Given the available information, the study analyzes a sample of 4 million servers, out of 9 million servers. Just over 53.5 thousand of them receive more than the ceiling — 1.34% of the sample, or 0.39% of active legal staff. Not surprisingly, the majority are judges (R$21.1 thousand, at a cost of more than R$11.5 billion), prosecutors (R$10.3 thousand, with a surplus of R$3.2 billion) and executive officers (R$12.2 thousand, at a cost of R$4.3 billion, most of whom are members of the Federal Public Prosecutor’s Office).
In the judiciary and the public ministry, profits above the ceiling have become the norm. The study found that “the proportion of serving judges and members of Parliament who are paid above constitutional limits consistently exceeds 90% of the total workforce.” The percentage is estimated at 93.5% for the judiciary; 93% for Rio de Janeiro MP; 98.1% for Minas Gerais; And 98.2% for Sao Paulo. For comparison purposes, in the study sample, 24.3% of federal auditors, 30.8% of union public defenders and 10.8% of legislative counsel received superior salaries.
There are approximately 20,000 judges and 8.5,000 prosecutors in the sample at the top of Brazil’s income pyramid, the 1% that earn more than R$685,000 annually. Among this elite, 11,000 earn more than R$1.2 million annually (they are in the top 0.4% income group). The Rio prosecutor received R$5.9 million over 12 months. The ten highest-paid judges in Rondônia earned R$15 million, in adjusted amounts, over seven years.
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For comparison: In Germany, only 16 state salaries exceed the 1% highest income threshold. In Portugal 33. In France 47. In the United Kingdom 139. In Chile 180. In Argentina 880. In the United States 360. In Italy 1115. In Mexico 1635. In Colombia 2774. And in Brazil there are 40 thousand in the sample alone. The study notes that “at least 2.7% of the Brazilian economic elite is made up of legal civil servants.”
In Germany, no government employee earns more than the President of the Republic, which is the maximum salary approved for civil servants. In Portugal there are only three. In Colombia, 12. In Italy, 46. In France, 77. In Chile, 749. In the United Kingdom, 1,986. And in the United States, 4,081 (mostly doctors, dentists, and scientists in management positions, in addition to the 12 regional chairs of the Federal Reserve). Argentina is the country closest to Brazil, with at least 27,000 people earning more than the ceiling. However, this is equivalent to half of those receiving superior salaries in the Brazilian sample alone.
In the other 10 countries analysed, the highest salaries in the judiciary are paid to the highest positions, such as presidents of high courts. “But this is not what happens in Brazil,” the study says. High pay here is linked to “the accumulation of various additional payments that have little or nothing to do with leadership positions, such as a housing allowance, additional payments for length of service, or vacation bonus.” In other countries, there is no room for these “trinkets” to be relevant. Here, in addition to being significant, these compensation funds are exempt from income tax and will therefore be excluded from the minimum tax calculation for those who earn more than R$ 600,000 per year, which was introduced in the last reform. “Germany, Portugal, France and Italy have developed clear rules on this issue, in particular based on wage scales that limit the size of additional payments,” the study says.
Chile and Mexico are cited as examples of countries that have fostered transformations capable of containing super-salaries, even partially, in the public sector, “with the establishment of an external salaries commission and the establishment of a global salary cap – both the result of political mobilization of different sectors of society.” The conclusion of the research is simple and precise: Brazil urgently needs to create an “effective system to prevent and combat super-wages.” The measures taken by many of the countries analyzed can serve as a source of inspiration and should be incorporated into the administrative reform proposal currently being processed in Congress. “When applied to all sectors of the bureaucracy, such measures will contribute to reducing the involvement of the Brazilian state in maintaining high levels of social inequality in the country.”