Posted on 04/11/2011 3:26:07 PM PDT by Got Long Form?
Republican leaders in Congress think so, and they are calling for an overhaul of the entire federal pay system to help slash government spending.
Democrats and other defenders of the government work force say federal workers are actually underpaid compared with their private counterparts.
A closer look at the data shows that both sides have a point but that supporters of federal workers are a bit closer to reality....
That argument is backed up by a 2002 study of the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office. It found that federal salaries for most professional and administrative jobs lagged well behind compensation offered in the private sector.
The CBO study concluded that the best way to measure the difference is to compare government jobs with those in the private sector that match the actual work performed. The CBO found that salaries for 85 percent of federal workers in professional and administrative jobs lagged their private sector counterparts by more than 20 percent.
Among lawyers, for example, the average pay in the federal government was about $127,500 a year in 2009, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The average lawyer in the private sector earned $137,540. And the starting salary at large law firms in Washington, D.C. -- where most government lawyers work -- is $160,000, and can grow to hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, according to the National Association for Law Placement....
(Excerpt) Read more at finance.yahoo.com ...
The result is that the government's pay rates are too low to attract competent scientists and engineers. As a result, we get hacks and policies based on pseudo-scientific twaddle like "global warming". Similarly, we have hack lawyers generating policy based on ignorance of fundamental points of American jurisprudence and Constitutional law.
Too many government leeches.
We need a good old fashioned doggie butt drag across the carpet to scrape the parasites off.
The study they quote is almost 10 years old.
I'm pretty sure the situation hasn't changed; if anything, it's gotten worse in terms of being able to get competent people.
Welcome to FR
Beat me to it. If they are so underpaid then WHY, pray tell, are my coworkers desperate to land a gummint job?
Sorry, it not 2002, it is now 2011. It is completely irrational to think a 2002 study has any validity concerning current compensation for Federal employees.
LMAO!
First Fact Check is ran by a bunch of Leftist... So the credibility of this is extremely low. They should change their name to half the facts with a lot of spin.
Second, most of the government civilian employees are a waste of money and could never earn that type of money in the private sector. Over half of the civilian government jobs are for people that could never make it in the private sector. They are just Leaches off the tax payer. I know a few federal government workers in different departments and you would be shocked of what I have heard. They even admit it. It’s sad.
Here you want to see these Leaches at work, then just look at this link,
If I'm not mistaken, there are more people working in the Dept. of Agriculture than there are farmers in this nation.
And ............. Are there too many of them?
Do I understand correctly that gov’t workers get the Cadillac health insurance? How many non-gov’t workers does Obama give that one to? NONE!
Huh? The specific figures cited are from 2009.
They get waivers from Obammycare.
YES & YES!
AND, if they all took two days off without pay we could pay down the debt!
First day poster....
There’s a reason you can’t find competent people to work for the government and it isn’t just about pay scales. You have to have a certain mindset to do it. It isn’t the least bit comparable to the real world.
Oh yes, definitely. There has been NO CHANGE in the past 2 years regarding the federal work force, so yes, definitely, let's rely on a NINE YEAR OLD STUDY...which probably used stats from THREE OR FOUR YEARS BEFORE THAT!
Here is a headline for ya:
answer: yes.
I have two friends that graduated from college (around 2000) with degrees in Accounting. Both moved to the DC metro area. Friend #1 got hired by a private accounting firm, the other got a job with the federal government as a GS-09. Right out of the gate the friend in the private sector was making $50K, while the one in the Government was making $35K. However, after 5 years the gap had narrowed considerably. The private sector friend was making $80K, but the government friend was now a GS-13 making $72K. However, salary wasn't the whole story, the private sector friend worked a 50-60 hour week, while the government friend NEVER worked more than a 40 hour week. Long story short, the private sector friend realized the grass was greener on the other side and ended up with the federal government as well. Now they are both GS-14 making over $100K a year.
Got long form is dead.
So she just goes to her office every day and does nothing.
I find it hard to think that I have this uncanny ability to find people in public places working for the government who do nothing. I know of five in the past six months and that does not include the two relatives I have who admit to doing close to nothing. My mother in law thinks those are the successful ones, because they are always available to go shopping and to lunch during the work-week.
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