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.
On 9/11 government employees in the Washington DC area gave up the "low stress" part.
What do you pay for health benefits? When I worked for the State of California it was dang near mothing. When I left, I needed a $10k/year raise just to make a lateral net move.
So did millions of private sector employees around the country. We are all in the bullseye.
I've met you...or your 50,000 clones in DC.....
Fed Jobs are the slackers way to survive, they are for folks with no ambition/skills....
And that's the truth....
Personal days may mean different things to different people. The firm I know about switched from vacation and sick days off to personal days which covers both former sick and vacation days off. Personal days are not an addition but rather a combination of sick and vacation time off. The holidays remain the same. Bookkeeping is much simpler for that small business.
How many of you took Cipro for 6 months?
Then they must not be great lawyers. They can still be great guys, just not great lawywers. Starting salary -- right out of law school -- for the best lawyers is over $100k. If they make the cut, they can expect to jump to over a half mil in their first ten years out. If they switch from straight law to Wall Street, then the sky is the limit.
Do you like your letter carrier?
Toyota also shuts down for retooling. Their secret is in running a non-union shop but keeping most of the benefits (and doing it in a less urban environment).
Here you go --
http://boston.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2006/02/27/story4.html
Gov't starting salaries don't even come close.
TVA is an oddity within the fed. Pay scales are remarkably similar to the rest of the utility industry. There is no civil service protection, though many departments are union. Social security is collected. Benefits line up fairly well with the utility world as well. And it might well be the only federal agency that isn't bathed in red ink.
Best thing about sick leave, though, is NOT HAVING TO USE IT.
That's for sure. But the second best thing about sick leave is that it is there when you need it. I burned up about 15 days after a fairly nasty car accident earlier this year. 6 of those days were in ICU. Glad to have sick leave when needed.
"I got 30 days off per year while serving in the Air Force! Of course now I only get 10 days per year in the private sector"
Apples and Oranges...Military leave is computed to include holidays/weekends while you are gone....according to the book.
Military leave is 6-weeks a year...if ya' work it right...
What about your pension plan? How long do you have to work before collecting benefits? How much as a percent of pay do you contribute? What is the payout as a percent of salary? Is the payout indexed for cost of living adjustments?
How about health insurance? What do Fed workers pay a month for a family? What are the co-pays and deductibles?
I'm not down of Fed employees by any means and think most are talented and hard working. But there are many ways to be compensated aside from take-home pay. And the fact that very few Fed employees "move on" for better pay must say something. I have never met a USPS employee who didn't hate his job with a passion, and I also don't know one who ever quit that job.
Nope!
It IS the big bucks, the low performance expectations, the twisted accounting practices....AND everything you mentioned
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