[dennisw]

Federal workers now have double -- DOUBLE! -- the average compensation of private sector workers

Median public sector pay long ago left median private sector pay in the dust. Yet the canard that government workers deserve heavy benefits and lavish pensions because they don't make as much as those in the private sector continues to be trotted out as if it were an obvious truth.

Bunk. Just look at the graphics above that Chris Edwards of Cato found in a new round of official data for federal employees.

The second graphic shows total compensation for federal employees is now double that of private sector workers.

What makes this particularly amazing to me is that this has happened even though federal employee unions aren't seen as having all that much clout in Washington D.C. Somehow, they're doing even better than state and local government workers in places like public employee union-controlled California. Hat tip to wonderful PensionTsunami.com.

[muawiyah]

It's simply the education requirement. As the federal government has become more and more dependent on computer systems a greater percentage of the federal jobs have required higher and higher technical degrees.

Plus, private sector finds it perfectly acceptable to employ released felons, dope users, folks without highschool diplomas, illegal aliens, and so forth.

The federal government is generally prohibited from tapping into that excellent source of analysts eh!