Yes. SES. lol. They are the folks that are the highest paid and bring the average of the government worker so high. They are the figurehead and basically just go to Congress to try to get more money for their respective Department. I have only worked with a few but that was my experience. Most are retired Admirals and Generals who don’t need to be paid that much.
I do not know how many million federal employees we have, but there are less than 1000 flag officers (O-7 to O-10) and about 7000 SES folks. The salaries of these senior managers mathematically cannot skew the average federal salary much at all.