Posted on 03/13/2014 2:15:55 PM PDT by Hojczyk
The United States Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced on March 12th that the total cost of employing a state or local government worker is 45% more than an equivalent worker in the private sector.
For the month of December 2013, employers in private industry spent an average of $29.63 per employee hour worked, but the equivalent cost for a government worker averaged $42.89 per hour.
Not only do government employees average 33% higher pay than those in the private sector, their pension and retirement benefit costs are now an incredible 254% higher also.
Given that compensation formulas for federal, state, and local government are comparable, it should come as no surprise that this year spending by the U.S. government will exceed revenue by an all-time high of $744.2 billion, and our gross national debt is a stunning $18.5 trillion.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
The gap in pay between federal employees and private-sector workers has jumped 8 percentage points since last year, according to new data presented at a Federal Salary Council meeting Friday.On average, federal employees earn 34 percent less than their private-sector counterparts, according to the council's analysis....
Overgeneralizations are misleading
some jobs may be easy to compare, skilled crafts, or licensed professionals, for example.
governments have some unique job titles like police, firefighter, judges, fighter pilots,
I would be interested in comparison of identical jobs.
That's the crucial variable for getting useful comparisons. The statistic cited in this article appears to just use lumped-together averages, which naturally skews the result (there are millions of burger-flippers in private business but hardly any in the government, especially since they contracted out all the janitorial and maintenance functions).
I’d be willing to bet that if the military was removed from the equation the cost of government employees would be a whole lot higher.
“their pension and retirement benefit costs are now an incredible 254% higher also. “
Piped right into the false Stock Market
we think we have public "servants" and what we really have is public "obligations" that go on and on and on......
if I was to do it all over again, I'd say every couple should have one worker for the state so they can get all the bennies and days off and glorious pensions and health care....
It used to be gov’t work didn’t pay as much as the private sector but they had good benefits. Now it pays more plus they have outstanding benefits. Something has got to give.
retire in 20 yrs on near full pay?....or retire on "disability" over "stress"....or have serious marks against you like our local where one guy was working another job while docked into his cop job and another was banging his married girlfriend while supposedly on his job...that guy quickly "retired" and so now he'll get probably more than most people get working...
I am just tired of it....
Please note that this article is about State and Local Government employees, not Federal employees.
As for Federal employees, the question whether they are overpaid or underpaid depends upon the amount of their education. This CBO report from 2012 supports this line of thinking.
http://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/cbofiles/attachments/01-30-FedPay.pdf
They have agree over the years to contracts that have wage increases as well as deferred benefits such as retirement and healthcare in retirement. The politicians (and the people who vote for them)try to not acknowledge the future costs of those promises in their yearly budgets. They kick the can down the road. They have been doing it for at least a generation.
We now see some government entities unable to pay for the benefits that their predecessors had promised. The taxpayers are on the hook, not the now-moved-on politicians who went along with the labor agreements.
In christie-Cuomo land, I understand that the NJ State Pension system is ‘underfunded’ because the governors and the legislatures over the years have not put cash aside to pay for the pension obligations. Incredibly, New York's State Pension system is (reportedly) adequately funded, because of a difference in the laws or state constitution that require municipalities to make annual contributions.
On the other hand, cops in parts of the NY metropolitan, after a year or three, have base salaries approaching $100,000.
Public employees have better unions than the rest of us. The people who work in those jobs got lucky. Instead of bitching about it, we have to get active and make candidates promise that they will act as fiscal conservatives. We can't allow any of them to keep ‘kicking the can down the road”
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