Actually they may have between 9/11 and 2007 due to ramping up for war on terror, but they don't now. The two studies that showed they did failed to adjust for education. The majority of the federal workforce has BSc or higher. In the DoD agency I worked at the MINIMUM education required for hire has always been a MSc in a hard science with required credits in math and hard science (engineering, physics, or math). The DoD RDT&E community has contracted out the low education jobs, so almost all the jobs are professional degrees (MSc, PhD, J.D.). Here is a CBO chart from 2005-2010 showing the comparison then; in reality the wage freeze since 2010 has hurt government scientists and engineers much worse than the private sector (based on salary and benefits among private contractors vs. government). It is true that blue collar jobs pay better, but there are very few of them, and they are specialized labor (e.g. fabrication, test range workers).
I would also consider that the only reason this doesn't hold true for PhDs is that many PhD holders work for universities where the nearly universal access to student loans has upwardly distorted the salaries of college professors.
The problem is the growth of government. How many new, private-sector jobs does it take to finance a single government (any level) job? Obama’s administration was gung-ho in launching new regulations requiring more (read: new) gov’t employees. Were new private-sector jobs created to cover the expansion? Nope. We just borrowed more money. Personally, I think there ought to be a limit on how long any hired government employee can work in the government sector.
the wage freeze since 2010 has hurt government scientists and engineers much worse than the private sector
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just more BS self serving gov’t stats .. come join us in the real world.