New York State has the second-highest payroll for government employees in the nation, doling out $5.4 billion to city and state workers in March 2006, according to new data released yesterday by the Census Bureau.

The salaries in New York State were second only to those in California, which paid $8.9 billion to government workers, the data show. Nationwide, public employees were paid more than $60 billion that month.

Based on its population, in March 2006 New York ranked third for its per-capita payroll expenditures, about $280, following only Arkansas and Wyoming. West Virginia ranked last, with $154 percapita payroll expenditures.

“It has to do with the mix of public services that exist, and that’s a function of urbanization,” an economist with the Fiscal Policy Institute, James Parrott, said. “There’s variation in public employment that depends on the character of state economics and the density of settlement.”

Mr. Parrott pointed to transit and public safety needs in New York City as two industries that could boost employment and payroll in the state.

Overall, the New York State payroll represented a slight increase from the year before, and reflected an increase in the number of municipal employees.

According to the annual survey, New York State ranked third among states in the number of government employees, with nearly 1.2 million “full-time equivalent” employees, which includes full-time and part-time workers. Among them were 71,600 local police officers, 48,596 transit workers, and 9,543 library employees.

Overall, the number represented a jump of about 6,000 employees since March 2005, the last time the Census Bureau published the employment and payroll report. It also was an increase from 2000, when there were just over 1.1 million state and local government employees.

“Generally what it shows — this is with the exception of New York City — the public sector grows even when the private tax base isn’t,” the director of the Empire Center for New York State Policy, E.J. McMahon, said. “One of the main reasons for the ‘perfect storm of unaffordability’ is this increase in payroll,” he added, referring to Governor Spitzer’s description of the high cost of state and local government.

In September, Mr. McMahon said, his group completed a report that looked at changes in employment in New York since 2000, and found a “significant” increase of about 17,500 municipal workers throughout the state. “The growth has been in the local” governments, Mr. McMahon said yesterday, adding that most of the workers were outside New York City.

According to the census data released yesterday, education was one of the employment categories that saw an increase. There were 327,557 elementary and secondary school instructors in New York State in March 2006, up from 321,891 in 2000. However, the increase in the number of employees in the noninstructional area was greater than the increase in the number of actual teachers, the data show: There were 135,747 non-instructional school employees in March 2006, up from 117,683 in 2000.

“It basically confirms other data we’ve seen, which is that there is an increase in government at a local level, and it’s largely school employees,” Mr. McMahon said.