Posted on 12/11/2009 11:52:00 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Even as federal employees' salaries are growing robustly, the president's pay czar Kenneth Feinberg has imposed new limits on executive compensation at AIG, Citigroup, General Motors, and GMAC, all recipients of government bailouts. Salaries will be limited to $500,000 in cash, and bonuses will be tied to "real achievement of objective goals."
Chris Edwards at CATO—who has done quite a lot of independent analysis of federal pay—puts this story in context and adds some juicy details from his own data. Most remarkably, there are fully 383,000 federal workers earning six-figure salaries and 22,000 earning salaries of over $170,000. And these numbers don't even include the $41,000 in non-salary benefits the average federal employee receives each year.
* * *
There may be 7.3 million Americans out of a job in this economy, but it’s happy days for federal employees. The number of civil servants making $100,000 or more has jumped over 46 percent since the start of the recession.
The most dramatic increase came in the Transportation Department, where the number of employees earning salaries of over $170,000 jumped from one to a whopping 1,690 in just a year and a half. The growth was triggered by rules that prevent top employees in a given department from making more than their bosses. In this case, when Congress raised the Federal Aviation Administrator's salary, it triggered raises for nearly 2,000 of his subordinates.
The Defense Department also saw a salary explosion when new merit-pay rules took effect—and there turned out to be a whole lot more merit around the Pentagon than Congress expected. The result was a five-fold increase in the number of defense officials earning $150,000 or more.
Across the board, the salary bonanza has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.
Overall, the recession has been a boon for the Beltway crowd. We related last week that the Washington metropolitan area received nearly 10 times as much stimulus money per capita as the national average, keeping the unemployment rate in the area at 6.2 percent, far below rates of other large cities—9.3 percent in New York; over 10 percent in Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles—and the national average of 10.2 percent.
Recovery Act funding alone has fed the creation of 407,000 government contract jobs—or two thirds of all jobs "created" under the Act—according to one independent analysis. And during a time when most businesses are downsizing, the federal government itself actually grew by 13,000 employees in the last year—the first increase since the 1970s.
And the trend continues. We previously indicated that last week's jobs report wasn't nearly so positive as it looked (because the stats were juked), but what little real job creation there was occurred almost entirely in the government and education sectors.
Not to mention the fact that your retirement plan, guaranteed to pay regularly with annual cost of living increases until the day you die, includes people with guns to go collect your monthly stipend from people who actually produce wealth.
anything to grow gubermint.
bump
Remember, we exist only to support them
know your role and shut your hole...just keep payin your taxes, serf!
sincerely,
King Barry
I remember when Clinton was president he hired 1,000 people in DC by a stroke of the pen. Entry level civil service workers, many were sent to work at Walter Reed. They had a cubical and sat around all day talking on the phone and playing on a computer. That was more than 10 years ago, by now they have been promoted because it is a right and are likely making much more that the average American.
February 6, 1992
Despite the defeat of the August 19 August 21 Communist coup in Moscow most of the officials on the local level are former Communist bureaucrats, who are hostile to free market reforms and have excellent connections with bureaucrats of similar background on the national level. They are there because it is impossible to change the entire staff of local and central bureaucracies in the few months that have passed since August.
Local government officials are opposed to free market reforms because they threaten their control over the local economy. Once real privatization occurs, no one would need bureaucrats to manage the economy, and local government power over the population would be much more limited, as it is in the West.
...or like the West used to be.
Let’s not forget many Freepers work for the government in some capacity. Don’t put all of them in one boat.
Salaries are all over the map. In some jobs, they’re excessive, but in others they’re quite low.
What the so-called "progressives" "regressives" never explain as they create this monster employer called "government," is that their "jobs" are wealth-absorption jobs; whereas, jobs in the productive, private sector are wealth-creation jobs.
That is why the private sector should not let politicians co-opt their wealth-creation role in the society by accepting tax dollars as so-called "incentives." Once they do, they become participants in the rob-Peter-to-pay-Paul scam which serves to shrink the economy and increase the coercive power and wealth of unscrupulous politicians and bureaucrats in government.
Is it not telling that Adam Smith was a "moral philosopher" whose publication of "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" coincided with America's Declaration of Independence and became the basis of the greatest explosion of personal liberty, opportunity, innovation, and goods and services ever known to man?
Far Left (those who call themselves "progressive") politicians are fond of studying "poverty." What a waste! If they were serious about relieving poverty, they would, like Smith, be studying "wealth creation" and "individual liberty."
Sadly, their objective is neither relieving poverty nor pursuing liberty. It is as old as the history of civilization: it is accumulation of coercive power in the hands of a political elite.
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I think they all get the same benefits. Originally the wages were low because the benefits off-set the wages.
I just had a friend come back from the Beltway after a visit and could not believe the way folks were spending, spending, spending.
She lived and worked in DC during the 90’s and now lives in Florida. Even as a Lib she had to admit that DC is out of touch with the rest of the Country.
Honestly I think the cost of living in DC drives it (and conversely the salaries drive cost of living) since benefits don’t pay the mortgage - the salaries increased.
This article is totally bogus. 70K in the Wash DC area and you’re barely cutting it.
I’d gladly trade my 100K job in DC with a 50-60K job in a less expensive, less congested, less polluted, less illegal immigrant area of the country any day of the week.
HOWEVER, this is where the jobs are.
try living in the DC metro area on an ‘average’ American salary.
Guaranteed my taxes will go to paying your food stamps and subsidized housing allowance.
GUARANTEED.
Really, what’s the average salary of the Gov. contractor? Everyone seems to forget that a substantial part of the American work force in total are working on some kind of local, state, federal contract.
now add that to your calculations.
Again, this article is bogus.
Really, what’s the average salary of the Gov. contractor? Everyone seems to forget that a substantial part of the American work force in total are working on some kind of local, state, federal contract.
now add that to your calculations.
Again, this article is bogus.
face the facts.....SS might be a ponzi scheme and unethical and unsustainable but look at the govt workers.....
they'll be taking every penny we peasants make to pay them....
I won't do it...
maybe the mafia had it right all along....
we're fools to think we have anything to gain in this new America.....
obey laws?...pay taxes?...be a good citzen?...WHY?
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