This is a problem in the federal, state, and local governments right now. The biggest issue relates to pension plans and the government's commitment to defined pensions. This is playing out with major consequences all over the country. Every state is trapped in pension plans for its employees. I'm not sure how you can justify pensions for government workers when most workers in the private sector have no pension plans at all. I've never been offered one nor do I know anyone who has been offered one. Then again I don't have a powerful union arranging these things for me on my behalf.<p>I'm sure nothing is going to be done about this on a federal level as budgets are only a concern for state and local governments who in some cases have balanced budget amendments to deal with.<p>Unions never will accept pay cuts for its members instead preferring that members be laid off instead. I don't quite get the logic but that seems to be how it's playing out all around the country.<p>As a country we're totally broke right now and we need to start acting like it.
This "study" is useless without comparing people working similar jobs. Federal civil servants are typically white-collar, well-educated, highly-specialized professionals. The average private sector employee is not.<p>The overall impression I get from friends and family members in the DC area is this: there's a strong appeal to the stability and pension plans available from working for the federal govt (although for young workers, the pension plans aren't nearly as good). However, once you're fully vested in the pension plans, almost everyone switches to private industry because the salaries are higher. (Frequently, this actually means doing exactly the same work, but as a govt contracter through a private company rather than a direct hire.)
They should break down that compensation according to positions. I once considered a government job until I saw that as a programmer I could make 18k more in industry. Over the years this has not changed considerably. This is vividly expressed by the remarks of the current red-headed poster child, minerals management services. There people could earn up to 2x their salary by going into private practice.<p>Where my own personal analysis has not considered is the defined pension plans (which I've always considered more of a liability due to their chronic underfunded nature.)
Sounds like an apples-to-oranges comparison. So many differences between the public employment sector and private. To pick just one example, probably the top pay for a government worker in any branch appears to be somewhere on the order of $100-200k (not sure exactly but I'd be shocked if it's 10x that much). But in the private sector, clearly the top pay (CEO's, hedge fund owners, entertainers and athletes) seems to be in the $100m range. That's a factor of 1000 difference at the top. So this is bound to throw off the averages. (They did say average, therefore mean, and not median.) And of course also in the private sector there are certain employment areas like farm work and restaurant workers where the pay is at or below minimum wage, some of which to illegal aliens and under-the-table cash pay that isn't counted. I'd be surprised if anybody that works directly for the government gets as low as minimum wage for anything. Plus add the fact that the mix/distribution of jobs in government is going to be totally different than in the private sector (eg., no strippers or baseball players work for the government) and they're making a truly apples-to-oranges comparison, and the conclusions they're implying are invalid.
I think there IS an apples/oranges comparison. Look at the salaries for PhD Chemists (published by ACS, as well as GS pay scales), private industry looks to be at least 10-20% higher than Govt grades. Google is your friend, albeit a wordy one...<p>And I think people forget that the GS retirement system changed for those hired in 1984 onwards. Before that, they had a pretty sweet system that didn't involve social security - so they could retire, work 10 years and double dip. For newer workers, they paid into and used the social security system from the start, making double dipping much much harder. Sorta sucked.<p>And the raises were terrible - in the mid 80's I saw 3%, 0%, 3% and 2% raises. No bonuses, stock options, etc.<p>So maybe the average private worker is paid less than the average government worker. But I venture to say that the average financial sector worker's doing well above any other-field worker you care to choose. Possibly including part-time bank tellers in with those trader types.
> "Can't we now all agree that federal workers are overpaid and do something about it?"<p>No, we can't. We could agree that private sector pay increases and real wages have stagnated and private sector workers are underpaid.<p>Except the analysis methodology is bunk and either or any conclusion is hogwash.
This newspaper story is somewhat misleading. It counts benefits as pay, including unfunded future liabilities, and draws no comparison between the composition of the private and public sector labor force. For example, federal employees are much more likely to have college degree. More on this here: <a href="http://faq.bea.gov/cgi-bin/bea.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=320&p_created=1156971364" rel="nofollow">http://faq.bea.gov/cgi-bin/bea.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p...</a><p>I do think it's a reasonable issue to examine, and that public-sector hiring, pay and liabilities have expanded too fast. I also think both political parties bear the responsibility for this.
The average (mean) is useless as a measure of central tendency when applied to a data set with outliers. Salary data has a highly skewed distribution with no shortage of outliers. If the author wanted to be credible, they should have compared apples with apples (federal employees vs. private sector employees with similar education/credentials) and printed the median pay of the two groups, or better yet, plot two histograms. As written, the article comes off as being the work of a know-nothing with an axe to grind.
Does anyone know how much a federal IT analyst make per year? If it's six-figures plus a full life-time tenure and pension. Then, I want to be on the American tax-payers' payroll!