What it takes to make at least $100,000 as a government employee. Hint: Consider being a first responder. The local government workers in Florida with the highest average wages are the employees of the 77 governments within Miami-Dade, whose average weekly earnings are $1,180 — about $61,000 a year. Average weekly wages of local government employees top $1,000 in Broward, Collier, Duval, Lee, Monroe, Palm Beach and Sarasota counties. But some in government earn much more than that — six-figure incomes that are a rarity in some governments but in others as common as one in five employees. OpenTheBooks.com, a non-profit that publishes information on government contracts, spending and salaries, issued a 2018 report on Florida that showed 34,873 government employees in Florida made more than $100,000 in 2017, at a cost to taxpayers of $5.5 billion.