New York City’s payroll spans millions of employees and billions in spending each year—but what stories lie beneath the numbers? In this hands-on workshop, we’ll analyze a decade of public payroll records (2014–2024) to uncover how compensation is distributed across agencies, roles, and boroughs. Using Python and real NYC Open Data, you’ll learn to clean messy civic datasets, detect overtime trends, measure pay equity, and visualize budgetary shifts over time. Whether you're interested in data journalism, public policy, or municipal analytics, this session will equip you to transform raw payroll files into meaningful, evidence-based insights about the city's workforce.