Posted on 05/19/2006 4:25:10 PM PDT by lauriehelds
The pay gap between private and public sector employees seems to be a given. Just this week, 10 congressmen made their case for a higher 2007 civilian pay raise than President Bush has requested by citing a 30 percent private-public gap reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
"The federal government may never be able to compete with the private sector, dollar for dollar, but we must ensure that we do not fall further behind in the battle for talent," Reps. Tom Davis, R-Va.; Jon Porter, R-Nev.; Steny Hoyer, D-Md.; Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., and others said in a letter to fellow members.
But a new paper from the libertarian Washington-based think tank the Cato Institute argues that the pay gap actually travels in the other direction. Pointedly titled "Federal Pay Outpaces Private-Sector Pay," the paper by Chris Edwards, the institute's director of tax policy studies, makes the case for freezing government salaries.
By bundling federal benefits -- including defined pensions, the Thrift Savings Plan and health care subsidies -- together with wages, Edwards calculated that the average federal worker earned $100,178 in 2004, compared to $51,876 in salary and benefits for the average private-sector worker. Those numbers were based on statistics from the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
"The federal civilian workforce has become an elite island of secure and high-paid workers, separated from the ocean of private-sector American workers who must compete in today's dynamic economy," Edwards wrote.
In an interview, Edwards said he is trying to stir the pot on an issue that has no real adversaries. Federal employee unions are so vocal on pay issues, and Washington-area congressmen, including Republicans like Davis, who chairs the Government Reform Committee, are loyal to the many federally employed voters in their districts, Edwards said.
He said he suspects the BLS studies that find such a marked pay gap, and which do not take benefits into account, are flawed.
"There are questions about how these comparisons are done," Edwards said. "If you, say, look at a government lawyer versus a private lawyer, or accountants, the responsibilities and the hours worked per week can be quite radically different."
Most compelling, he argued, is the quit rate for federal employees, which is quite low and suggests that workers are satisfied with their pay.
Edwards said in his paper that some academic studies have found government workers to be overpaid, but his citation is a 1985 study by Steven Venti at the National Bureau of Economic Research.
Why did he pull from a 20-year-old study? Because, he said, there has been so much agreement in recent years on the pay gap that no one has bothered to complete an updated independent analysis.
" I assure you. Believe me, the taxpayers are getting their money's worth!"
Gee thanks, that makes me feel a lot better about the bloated pig that is the U.S. government. :)
mark
"I don't recall it being a "gravytrain"."
Just listen......the sound of the engine pulling the gravytrain you are riding right now in federal retirement is powered by the blood, sweat, and tears of real workers.
Just because you can't relate to them doesn't mean they aren't powering your free ride.
"As an active duty guy...I do too!!! I have worked with may government servants and NEVER thought that they made too much money. 100,000 average...obviously they are counting the over paid Senate and House."
They're counting benefits too I imagine.
Wow, that's a huge axe you're grinding...
What business pays wages? They are all part of the cost of goods--so the general public is paying your wages too. Wonder how you would react to someone telling you THEY pay your wages? It is a rude remark to make to anyone.
No, no, he's making a LOT more than $4-5! Did I say it wrong? (blush)
He's making $4-5 lower than a comparable job in the economic area. Sorry!!!!
There was a big write up, the gov't compared jet mechs to the wrong job on the outside and they got less money. This is at Robins AFB, GA. The same jobs in or near Atlanta, with nearly identical economy, made $6-8/hr more. Only they gave them a dollar or two and stopped, but they were supposed to move their pay up more.
"IBM got paid something like $2B to replace the Air Traffic Control system and backed out and kept the money!"
Those ba*tards! All they gave me was a lot of unpaid overtime. I want my cut!
"Wow, that's a huge axe you're grinding..."
LOL....I absolutely despise whiny gov't workers who do not appreciate the undeserved paycheck they get or the folks who make it all possible.
So yeah, it's a huge axe, because it is a huge burden you federal employees put on folks who actually work for a living.
Actually, I'm not a fed employee anymore. I'm now an evil freelance contractor.
My husband still works for the fed govt.
Given that he works about 1000 hours of OT in a given year, would you still say he's underworked?
Or are you so biased that anything to do with government service is considered immoral?
Since it is the case that virtually everybody manages to hire on an "average workforce" (all else being equal), it's a good idea for them to examine the ideas W. Edwards Demming set forth and see where they apply to the business at hand.
It's simply not enough to attempt to hire on superlative employees. You must endeavor to enable "average" people to do a superlative job.
Always seemed to me that the greatest part of the federal budget that got wasted was the one that paid off contractors.
"My husband still works for the fed govt.
Given that he works about 1000 hours of OT in a given year, would you still say he's underworked? "
So nice that you are keeping track of every hour.
Most of us out here in the real world just get the job done and don't whine about how many hours a year it takes.
It's a different world out here than federal employees can comprehend.
BTW, I do not buy into the Marxist idea that the only "real work" is that done by manual laborers, and that's the one you are trying to sell here.
Baloney. The government is a bloated beyond belief. We could eliminate 99% of federal "jobs" (including yours) and we'd all be better off.
_______________________
I'd like to see that list of jobs. 99% is a lot. There are 1.8 million federal workers (which by the way is fewer than when Nixon was President) so you would eliminate 1,782,000 jobs and leave 18,000 employees to run the courts, prisons, NASA, federal highways, DoD support functions (3,000 in Iraq right now), National Parks and Forests, Social security, Farmers Home Administration, FBI, Homeland Security, etc. You are a management genius. We need you in government.
Or the comp time.
Demming
He's a god in Japan...but I haven't read him enough to have an opinion.
"BTW, I do not buy into the Marxist idea that the only "real work" is that done by manual laborers, and that's the one you are trying to sell here."
Nice try. You prospered in the closest thing to marxism that exists today in the free world - the Civil Service System. I know nothing of marxism in my work, I just work hard and prosper because of it.
But since you brought up "manual laborers" how many do you think it takes to pay the taxes that fund the overly generous pension that you enjoy?
Right ~ 18,000 federal government employees, and each and every one of them would have to be an armed US Marshall, and with a country of 300,000,000, and the Mexican border to boot, they'd be on the trigger all the time ~ gimme' the contract to load ammo in the trunk eh?!
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