Are Federal Workers Overpaid?

[ashling]

I just got this email summary from Fact Check.org:

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Both sides in great pay debate are misleading the public.
December 1, 2010


Summary
President Barack Obama's recent announcement to freeze the pay of federal civilian workers did little to ice the debate over whether federal workers are overpaid or underpaid. Republican leaders and conservative think tanks claim federal workers are overpaid. They say the average federal worker is paid twice as much as those in the private sector. The federal Office of Personnel Management and unions that represent federal workers say on average they are paid 24 percent less than those in the private sector.

Both sides are armed with official government statistics, but neither side is right.

Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky, for example, said recently: "The average federal employee makes $120,000 a year. The average private employee makes $60,000 a year." This has become a GOP talking point and the basis for the House Republicans' call for a hiring freeze in the "Pledge to America." But it's misleading.

The analysis is based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and crudely done by dividing total compensation (salary and benefits) by the number of current federal civilian employees. Comparing such averages is quite misleading, for two reasons:

* First, BEA says the figure is inflated by including compensation that is actually paid to benefit retirees, not just for current workers. The figure is at least several thousand dollars too high, by our calculations.
* Second, the average federal civilian worker is better educated, more experienced and more likely to have management or professional responsibilities than the average private worker.

Officially, the Office of Personnel Management says federal civilian workers on average are paid 24 percent less than private workers -- a figure based on surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and often cited by unions and their Democratic allies. But this is misleading, too. The BLS surveys don’t include the cost of benefits -- which both sides agree are more generous for federal workers. Experts also say there are other flaws in OPM's methodology that prevent a true apples-to-apples comparison.

The last time the federal government undertook an in-depth analysis to compare federal and private-sector pay was in 1990. Howard Risher, the managing consultant on that 1990 report, says the data doesn't exist today to support either side in the great pay debate. Risher recently wrote in Government Executive magazine that "we truly don’t know" which side is right because "neither has detailed job-to-job comparisons to support their arguments."

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed on our Web site:

[readmoreoften]

1. The private sector has decreased pay. Are public workers supposed to suffer for profit too?

By even stating that there are two legitimate sides to this debate is to corrode the position of public workers.

[defendandprotect]

2. Private sector employees are UNDERPAID by about 40% ... UNIONIZE....

The attack on Fed employees makes no sense since they had nothing to do

with the economic turndown --

Obama's advisers engineered that -- and profited from it -- and now are refusing

to apply appropriate and strong enough remedies to it--!!

This is also another attack by Obama on those who are still involved with UNIONS.

Federal employees are UNIONIZED.

[readmoreoften]

3. +1

[Drale]

4. Knowing a few federal workers

I would say some are some are not. Some are payed way to much for the work they do, and some don't get payed nearly enough for the work they do. The same holds clear for workers of Cook County (my county in Illinois) and State of Illinois workers.

[Hannah Bell]

5. "several thousand dollars too high" - several thousand? bullshit.

fact check is misleading too.

the "average" federal worker is a clerical-type making a middle-class income.

only by averaging in the bloated salaries & bennies of the top tier do they come up with an "average" of $118K.

[Better Believe It]

6. No. Unorganized private industry workers are grossly underpaid.

[texastoast]

7. I would have gone to work for the public sector LOOOONG ago

If I could have made a better salary. It's just not there for what I do.

[county worker]

8. Having gutted private sector pay and benefits the right is now after the public sector.

The government workers like me never lost pension and benefits when the corporations were hammering the private sector workers. That is why it looks like we are better paid. In some cases we are. It use to be that private sector had better pay and benefits until the 70's and union busting.



The method they are using now is to pit what private sector workers that still have jobs against government workers.

My salary and my name are listed on a bunch of newspapers web sites in the state. All of us in county government are in for a fight. We are lucky so far that we have some pretty liberal county supervisors.

The thing we should be doing is having our unions, (mine is the SEIU) help unionize the private sector again. We are only strong if we stand together.


I think we should give up on national politics and consentrate in state and local elections to get liberals elected.

[tomg]

9. Good Grief.: are

federal workers overpaid? are teachers overpaid? are union members overpaid? Next up: is minimum wage too high?

[montanacowboy]

10. They calculate the top tier of Federal Workers

which are SES, Sr. Executive Service and also political appointees who usually are at the top dollar salary which I believe now is about $120K. These are attorneys and highly qualified degreed people who run agencies and are top staff to administrators. So if you average out their salaries with the lower paid peons, it might look pretty damn high.

Now, look at all the rest of them. I was a federal worker for many years and you have to work your way up the GS scale. I never felt the work I did was paid more than my counterparts in the private sector as I also worked in that sector as well.

So when they come out with that old bullshit about how highly paid the federal work force is that is what it is, bullshit. I am now contracting out to the State and am barely making 1.5 times minimum wage per hour. State employees are paid much less than federal.

[sad sally]

11. Decreasing wages of everybody seems to be the goal.

[SomeGuyInEagan]

13. Correct! n/t

[rfranklin]

14. BINGO!

You are the winning entry.

[Swamp Rat]

12. If you mean senators and representatives, definitely yes. eom

[blondeatlast]

15. No--and the benefits they calculate the differences should be available to EVERYONE.

focus on raising the bar, not finding a specious way to lower it.

[ejpoeta]

16. i am sure my sister who works for the IRS and LOVES faux news

would disagree with this. of course. for everyone else it is ok. state workers should take pay cuts! but she shouldn't have to. now, i tend to think all these pay freezes and paycuts are bs. unless EVERYONE from the top down is ready to take a cut it's bs. if you asked congress to take a paycut they would say it wouldn't do anything.... like in NYS it was suggested that our legislature and the governor should take a pay cut and they said it wouldn't make a difference. all those representatives taking a pay cut equal to the percentage they are expecting from others wouldn't make a difference? we all have to make sacrifices is bs.... us lowly serfs must take pay cuts while we watch profits at the top and earnings at the top soar.