The Texas Tribune’s database of Texas state employees’ compensation is updated to represent salaries as of July 1. It includes detailed data for the 112 agencies in state government and positions at each of those agencies.
Chris Essig
Chris Essig is the data visuals editor at The Texas Tribune. Based in Austin, he leads a team of developers who build charts, maintain public databases and analyze data to help reporters hold elected officials accountable. Chris has been a newsroom developer for 10 years and has worked in several local newsrooms. As a native of the Midwest, Chris received his journalism degree from Eastern Illinois University and spent six years in Iowa working at The Gazette in Cedar Rapids and at the Waterloo-Cedar Falls Courier in Waterloo.
Search the newly updated Government Salaries Explorer
The Texas Tribune’s database of Texas state employees’ compensation is updated to represent salaries as of April 1. It includes detailed data for the 112 agencies in state government and positions at each of those agencies.
T-Squared: Texas Tribune will host yearlong Scripps Howard Foundation fellows in data visuals and multimedia
Fabiana Chaparro will join the multimedia team, and Caroline Covington will join the data visuals team.
“I hate it here”: National Guard members sound off on Texas border mission in leaked morale survey
Frustration, anxiety and anger prevailed in the survey responses obtained by the The Texas Tribune and Military Times. The survey includes responses from nearly 250 members of Task Force South, one of six units that fall under the umbrella of Operation Lone Star.
“Light at the end of the tunnel”: Texas COVID-19 hospitalizations down as omicron wave appears to crest
Texas falls short, again, of the pandemic record for COVID-19 hospitalizations, while daily deaths are expected to continue rising for several more days.
Omicron pushes Texas ICUs to the brink
A staffing crisis and the surge from the omicron variant have pushed the number of Texas ICU beds to a new record low. The shortage affects not just patients with the coronavirus, but every Texan seeking serious medical care.
Search the newly updated Government Salaries Explorer
The Texas Tribune’s database of Texas state employees’ compensation is updated to represent salaries as of Jan. 1. It includes detailed data for the 112 agencies in state government and positions at each of those agencies.
Top stories from our data visuals team in 2021
In 2021, the Tribune’s data visuals team helped tell the biggest stories affecting Texans. Here’s a roundup of our most impactful work.
Holidays and at-home tests mean omicron’s spread will be harder to track in Texas
The Texas Department of State Health Services, which tracks the number of coronavirus vaccinations, cases, hospitalizations and deaths across the state, won’t be updating its daily dashboard Friday through Sunday both this week and next over the holidays.
We’ve been tracking COVID-19 trends in Texas for 20 months. Take our survey to help inform what we do next.
Our tracker presents the latest on tests, cases, hospitalizations, people who died and vaccinations. We want to know how this information can be more valuable to readers.


