The lard assed bureaucrat said as he lit a cigar with a $100 bill:
Robert Goldenkoff, director of strategic issues at the Government Accountability Office and author of a 2012 report examining the federal-private pay gap, of the new study. “Federal employees tend to be better educated and work in jobs that require higher skill levels compared to non-federal jobs, so Cato’s results comparing average wages of feds to other sectors are both not surprising and don’t tell the whole story. More rigorous, sophisticated analysis is needed.”
Jobs have been inflated to beat hell. I remember when a GS-12 meant something. Now it seems everyone is a GS-12 or higher especially in the darling agencies like EPA, justice etc.
As for better educated and higher skilled... not the ones I deal with. They just barely get by. Get jobs in the private sector... not likely. They don’t qualify.
The solution to that may be to completely revise veterans preference. Give the (non-retired) vets a preference on their first civilian job out of the military. Once they are in the civilian workforce and build up some experience, let them compete on a level field.