For example, USA Today (McPaper) did one of these "studies" a few years ago, and published the headline grabbing sensationalist claim that Federal workers make into the mid-six figures on average. A simple Google search of the number of Federal employees and the GS pay scales proved their claim completely false. McPaper then went on to claim that they fudged the statistics for some fictitious "total compensation and and quality of life" comparison, or some such nonsense. They threw in insurance, 401K matching, and other things that were not a one-to-one comparison anyway due to jobs or specific careers, but used their faulty numbers anyway.
Then, when you try to break down the comparisons of "Government Workers" - you try to ask: "Are they distinguishing among State, local, municipal, or Federal employees?" You get the sideways shuffle almost every time. Many State workers are enormously well compensated, but depending on the particular State, others are not. Moreover, if you ask if they are throwing teachers in some states (who again are well compensated in some states) with a Federal worker, they admit to fudging the data. Then you try and figure out if they are comparing professions like police and firefighters in the data, and which State, and you get the same shuffle.
In the end, "studies" like this one are gasoline bombs meant to fuel outrage. There should be outrage over many things our government does. But I don't appreciate anyone who throws red meat out there with manipulated data and attempts to play me like a fiddle.
Points well made. But you left off one. Most of the time, media reporters do not understand the studies and only report attention getting headlines.
Also, these studies are typically based upon ‘averages’ and as was once pointed out, ‘averages’ often conceal more than they reveal.
When you compare average private sector wages to average government wages, you are comparing different occupations. For example, inherent to private sector wages are retail workers and the government rarely employ retail workers. Second, government workers typically (especially federal) are found in high cost areas (DC, major metro areas, etc) while most private workers are not.
Most of the time when I compete for a contract, the government includes a list of government salaries for comparable labor categories. While it’s tempting to submit rates that support those salaries, I know that I would lose the contract, because my competitors will bid less.
Competition serves as an incentive to reduce costs. This dynamic is rarely present in the government sector. Add the unholy alliance between the Democrat Party and the public sector unions, and you can be sure that the taxpayers are going to be paying more than they should for public services.
Compare apples to apples and you will find one of them to be quite rotten. That will be the government worker apple.
If you figure total cost per hour worked all government workers are way overpaid.
Public sector unions need to be outlawed nationwide!