Hi Antoine,

I believe you have to distinguish between the roughly 300+ WMF employees and the roughly 200+ people like yourself who work for the WMF as contractors. (You are identified as a contractor on the Staff and contractors page.)

The Form 990 figures I quoted were for the number of actual employees, and their associated salary costs. This does not include contractors. It explains why the number of employees reported in the Form 990 is generally lower than the number of people listed or referred to on the Staff and Contractors page. 

Contractors are covered in a different part of the Form 990: Part IX, column (A), lines 11 a–g ("Fees for services (non-employees)"). In the audited financial statements, these costs become "Professional service expenses", the reported 2020/2021 total being $12.1 million, up from $11.7 million for 2019/2020. Assuming there are currently 200 or more contractors, contractors are thus paid at most around $60,000 on average. 

Employees, on the other hand, earn far more: the WMF reported that 165 employees (well over half) were on salaries of more than $100,000 in 2019. In 2015, that number had been 79, less than half that. (This info is found in Part VII, line 2 of the Form 990.)

The fact that salaried employees are paid more on average than contractors is partly (but not solely) due to many contractors living outside the US, where living costs are generally cheaper. Another reason why salary costs for employees work out at such a much higher average is that they enjoy substantial benefits, which are included in the total salary costs reported in a Form 990.

The salary costs that an organisation like the Internet Archive, the EFF or the Wikimedia Foundation reports in the Form 990 include, in addition to actual salaries and wages, pension plans, other employee benefits and payroll taxes – the figures in Part IX, column (A), lines 5–10.

The Internet Archive, for example, reported salary costs of $10,924,995 for 169 employees, for an average of $65,000 per head. Of these $10,924,995, pension plans, benefits and taxes together amounted to $1.4 million (there was no pension plan), or about 13% of total salary costs. Payroll taxes were 0.7 million, or half of that.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation reported salary costs of $12,407,966 for 102 employees, for an average of $122,000 per head. Of these $12,407,966, pension plans, benefits and taxes together amounted to 1.85 million, or about 15% of salary costs. Payroll taxes were $0.7 million, or 38% of that.

The Wikimedia Foundation reported salary costs of $55,634,913 for 291 employees, for an average of $191,000 per head. Of these $55,634,913, pension plans, benefits and taxes together amounted to $10.3 million (the biggest single item being "other employee benefits", at $6.6 million), or about 18.5% of total salary costs. Payroll taxes were $2.5 million, or 24% of that. So in the case of the WMF, more than three-quarters of the additional amount is not tax, but really does benefit the employee, be it through a pension scheme or some other kind of benefit.

As for updating the Staff and Contractors page, I think that at least the list of employees (as opposed to contractors) should always be up to date and complete. This should not be difficult for the administration to accomplish. 

Do you know how many employees there currently are?

Best,
Andreas

On Mon, Jan 3, 2022 at 9:28 AM Antoine Musso <hashar@free.fr> wrote:
On 30/12/2021 15:36, Andreas Kolbe wrote:
[...]
WMF salary costs have increased further since 2019. The 2020/21 financial statements[5] released earlier this month gave a "Salaries and wages" figure of $67,857,676, an increase of 22% over the year prior. 

Assuming a total of around 300 employees for that year, based on the number of employees shown in this April 2021 archive of the Staff and Contractors page,[6] I estimate the annual cost per WMF employee is now around $225K (I'm happy to be corrected on this if any of my figures or assumptions should turn out to be mistaken). 

Contractors (176 listed on the current WMF staff and contractors page[7]) are somewhat cheaper, of course.
[...]

Hello Andreas,

The Staff and Contractors page ( https://archive.today/rFGMv ) states there is more than 450 persons. That page is no more updated in a timely fashion and some employees are explicitly not listed on that page for a variety of reasons. I think we can just not keep up updating all our employees lists and that page is lagging a bit.

As I get it from internal lists, the foundation is nearing 600 employees and contractors (and we have five people starting today).

The form 990 has employee count based on the calendar year (291 from January 1st 2019 to December 30th 2019) while the expenses would be reported based on the fiscal year (July 1st 2019 to June 30 2020). If we got a few dozens of people hired in the first part of 2020 they are not shown in the head count but do reflect in the expense line yet. Finance and or HR at the foundation would be able to address your question.

I am entirely sure we are not making $190k per year on average nor $225k, those would be the total compensation / cost for the c levels or of the very top compensated persons (they are listed in the form 990 and also listed at https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Foundation_salaries .

Antoine "hashar" Musso
Wikimedia Release Engineering