Nine of the 10 highest-paid state employees work in New Hampshire prisons.
Last year, those nine alone earned a combined $3.1 million, earnings that a Monitor analysis of state salary data found were bolstered by copious amounts of overtime.
The highest-paid individual, Dwane Sweatt, a supervising officer at the Northern New Hampshire Correctional Facility in Berlin, made 2.5 times more than Gov. Kelly Ayotte. Sweatt earned $406,273, with $295,905 of that coming from overtime.
Bill Hart, who took over the Department of Corrections as commissioner last fall, said salaries can become inflated when an officer works four or five double shifts in a week. That’s especially true if that officer has been working for the department for years and already has a higher base pay rate. Corrections officers also make double overtime, or twice their regular hourly rate, after they surpass 80 hours in a two-week period.
“If you do that week after week, you can make an awful lot of money,” Hart said. “But let me be clear. That’s not optimal for DOC, and it’s not optimal for the folks who work here, not that I begrudge them the money — certainly they earn it.”
Employees involved in law enforcement and the justice system consistently earn the most among their state peers, largely due to overtime pay. Police and corrections officers, as well as judges, make up the majority of the state’s top 100 earners.
Sweatt is the only state employee to break the $400,000 threshold, but he’s not the only one to more than double his base salary through overtime.
Across the board, New Hampshire paid more than $69.1 million in overtime to employees, records show. Corrections accounted for more than a third of that sum, at almost $25.8 million. The runners-up were the Department of Health and Human Services at $10.6 million, the Department of Transportation at $9.3 million and the Department of Safety at $8 million.
How it works
With cavernous vacancy rates in its sworn ranks — 31% overall and 50% among base-level officers — the Department of Corrections often forces people to work overtime, Hart said. This is because each prison has minimum staffing requirements for certain areas.
For example, one cellblock might require three officers to operate safely. If one position is vacant, or if someone is sick or on vacation, that role must be backfilled by another officer, even if it requires them to go into overtime.
Hart said he’d rather have fully staffed prisons than rely on overtime. So many empty roles often force people to work and be paid for double overtime, which can accumulate quickly. It’s simply cheaper, he said, to pay salaries and benefits.
Of the top 100 earners on New Hampshire’s payroll, 56 work for the Department of Corrections. Corrections officers account for 87 of the 100 people who were paid the most overtime.
“The problem comes when you have a high vacancy rate like we do,” Hart said. People who have already worked several double shifts can repeatedly be ordered to come in, “thereby accruing the double time under the contract. So, that isn’t cheaper.”
The department’s use of overtime hours has remained consistent over the past five years — it authorized 335,347 overtime hours in 2025. But costs are increasing due to a 10% raise for all state employees in 2024 and additional increases for certain staff, plus union contracts. In 2021, the department only spent $16.6 million on overtime.
The state’s incarcerated population is 2,020 people, a steady decrease over the past decade. The department currently employs 400 sworn corrections officers, with 183 more allotted but vacant positions.
As of January 2025, the minimum hourly wage for a corrections officer in New Hampshire was $26.17 and the maximum was $39.54.
Other agencies are in a similar boat, though the circumstances aren’t as dire.
Gov. Kelly Ayotte instituted a hiring freeze for most state jobs last year, with a few exceptions, including law enforcement, corrections officers and roles that provide direct care.
Overtime is most often used for emergencies or round-the-clock services that the state provides.
The Department of Health and Human Services, the largest state agency, has budgeted $8.3 million for overtime in the current fiscal year, according to Jake Leon, the director of communications and public information. That’s just over 2% of its anticipated personnel expense. More than half of that overtime pay is used by New Hampshire Hospital and child protective services because of the round-the-clock nature of their work.
Workers at the Department of Transportation are also paid overtime “when operational needs require it,” according to Jennifer Lane, the chief communications officer. That includes treating roads after snowstorms, nighttime service patrols on the state’s turnpikes and attending necessary public meetings that are often held outside of regular work hours. The Department of Transportation spent $9.3 million on overtime and almost $100 million on total employee pay last year.
For the Department of Safety, which paid roughly $8 million in overtime last year, public information officer Tyler Dumont said it’s a combination of staffing shortages and the nature of the work.
“The New Hampshire Department of Safety naturally incurs higher overtime costs because of the unique demands of its mission. Our operations run 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year,” Dumont said in a statement. “Emergencies and critical incidents do not follow a schedule, and our teams must be ready to respond at any hour.”
Who works overtime and when is a question overseen by the commissioner’s office but approved by individual supervisors at the division level. The Department of Safety includes the State Police, Division of Motor Vehicles and other offices.
Dumont, for example, incurred about $20,000 in overtime pay last year. He’s responsible for handling inquiries from journalists and other forms of public messaging for emergencies, whether they happen during the workday or not.
“I get called after hours, and things don’t just happen between 8 and 5,” said Dumont, whose overtime requests go to an assistant commissioner. “If there is a need for it and it’s public safety critical, we’re gonna address it.”
State salary data is available online through Transparent NH. Here are the state’s 100 highest earners, according to those records.
Correction: This story has been updated to reflect that corrections officers make double overtime.