This is an interesting article and cartoon about the topic we are discussing. I think the cartoon pretty much sums it up.
Federal vs. corporate pay scales: A cartoonist tries to sort it all out -- Government Computer News
. It's called human nature.It's a CARTOON. Have a sense of humor. I am listening to others and still believe that most criticism of other's choices comes from our Puritan ethic past. When we see someone doing better than we are, having more things than we do or just having more fun than we are, we want to bring them to our level
you are NOT listening. You're all going to love this article from today's Washington Post
Federal Eye - Federal salaries fall behind private sector, panel says
I just can't imagine the reactions
I just can't imagine the reactions
Wow, so it looks like most of the government employees get better pay, more security AND better benefits! I guess beowulf was right - he probably couldn't imagine the reactions from that article
-ERD50
??) and ERD50 are taking into account is that many of the lower paid workers are only lower paid for a limited period of time. This is hard to explain, but most highly educated workers in the government start at low grade levels and are promoted relatively quickly. As an example, an MBA from a top 20 school in industry may start out at $90K a year, or more. The same person in the federal government would start at about $51K in the Washington, DC area. Less in the rest of the country except maybe for SF, NY and Boston. Same thing for lawyers and other professionals. . ).
If to satisfy an academic curiosity, sure, why not? If to decide on appropriate public policy on wages and benefits, I don't think we do need that understanding or that data. We should just make sure that people have enough choices and they are informed about their choices, and then the magic invisible hand of the market will set wages and benefit levels for us.
One thing that I'm not sure Texas Proud (love them Giants, right
What happens next is that the feds get promoted and earn more, but they can generally never overcome that initial difference. By the time they get to $150K, their counterparts are making $200K, $300K or more. And those who go on to manage large organizations get maybe $170K, while similar folks in industry get millions
Those who stay in lower grades - lets say for example grades 5 through 12 - and don't rise above that level, tend to lack college degrees and slowly move to the top of their pay scale, which take about 20 years. At which point the only pay raises they can get are the annual COLAs. What I'm probably not explaining well is that we are still talking apples and oranges as to the experience level of the feds vs industry.
If you have an admin assistant in the government and an admin assistant in industry, they both probably started out earning about the same annual salary in a given geographical are. But, over time, the fed will receive a steady stream of raises, even if they are not promoted, that will most likely exceed those being received by the industry person.
This is why the study shows what it did about the lower salary folks. There is no easy solution. It would be far too much effort and unfair to employees to reevaluate their salaries each year and compare every single occupational area to those in industry. One problem is that in good times, federal salaries are held down to prevent inflation. In bad times, they are held down because....times are bad. I'm referring to annual Colas here. So, in the end, it sort of averages out because of the non-cola increases.
So what happens is that step increases slowly raise salaries so that they may be higher than their industry counterparts for the lowest paid feds. This helps retention and allows the government to have highly trained people who know their agency. While there are more lower paid employees than those of higher grades, why would you want to take away money from those people? Even if we make an assumption (total guesswork on my part) that there are 1M lower paid employees and that they make, on average, $5,000 more than their industry counterparts, that comes to $5B annually. That's a lot of money, but less than 2 aircraft carriers. Not really much in the grand scheme of things and you would be cutting the salaries of the most vulnerable people.
You keep saying that I'm not listening - you are mistaken - I am listening very well and all I hear is a lot of mean spiritedness. I have no idea what you do, how much you earn, or anything else. I'm more than willing to hear arguments for cutting federal pay and benefits when I see all those highly paid lawyers, managers and stock traders do the same. We all know that's never going to happen.
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Full-time Part-time Full-Time March
Full-time pay Part-time pay Equivalent Pay
Government Function employees ($) employees ($) Employment ($)
Education Total 1,367,822 6,848,603,701 1,280,607 1,428,543,675 1,814,027 8,277,147,376
Elementary & Secondary Education Total 48,044 224,236,589 18,871 19,115,238 52,975 243,351,827
Elem & Sec Instructional Employees 34,730 184,240,049 12,569 14,148,961 37,985 198,389,010
Elem & Sec Other Employees 13,314 39,996,540 6,302 4,966,277 14,990 44,962,817
Higher Education Total 1,238,175 6,265,859,712 1,248,402 1,388,895,163 1,673,771 7,654,754,875
Higher Ed Instructional Employees 401,040 2,808,347,552 410,039 676,797,121 548,236 3,485,144,673
Higher Ed Other Employees 837,135 3,457,512,160 838,363 712,098,042 1,125,535 4,169,610,202
Other Education 81,603 358,507,400 13,334 20,533,274 87,281 379,040,674Doesn't it depend on how much we would need to raise salaries? You are using qualitative reasoning about a quantitative question.
. The easy one to debunk is federal. Just because federal employees are not leaving the government is droves does not mean that their pay is too high. There are lots and lots of people who work for the government who truly believe in the jobs they are doing and want to make things better (whether you agree or disagree about the "better" part is irrelevant) 
. Taken as a whole, federal pay is not more generous than the private sector. There are occupational categories that may be higher and many others that are lower. As I have mentioned, it's pretty much impossible to change the overall pay structure to account for that. You can put specific jobs at a lower GS pay grade, but the variability of the availability of employees for those positions is too great to make that of much use. What I mean by that is people at the lower grades tend to go where the money is 
. In times like we have today, people flock to the government for stability. When times are really good in industry (the 90's), we tend to lose folks who see greater opportunities elsewhere. This has been amplified since 1984 when federal employee pensions became more portable. Plus the fact that federal pensions are fully funded - what the government does with this money is another story, but employees should not be penalized because of political greed .. And the fact that not everyone is in combat all the time is meaningless. Every soldier, sailor, airman and marine can be sent away from their families and put in combat at any time. Just ask the 100s of thousands of reservists who have been to Iraq and Afghanistan over the past 7 years.
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The reason I concentrate on federal pay and pensions is that I know that arena very well. I have little knowledge of state and local pay and pension systems, so I don't comment much about them. That being said, I believe the broad brush statements that public pay and pensions are too generous and unfunded are generalizations that don't hold water
As to state and locals, I see no way that anyone can say they are overpaid, underpaid or that their pensions are underfunded - as a broad general statement. What can be said is that there are excesses in some places, that there are some jobs that are overpaid and that there are many more that are fully competetive with private industry. There are thousands of pension systems for public positions and I doubt anyone on this board has knowledge of more than a few.
I do remember some early comments about the military pension system and benefits, but nothing lately. Don't even try to go there unless you can show you make sacrifices similar to those made by our military
I don't have the time to dig through all the posts to show "mean spirited" comments. But they are there, at least in my opinion. And I stand by my comments about the "sour grapes" attitude. One of the silier examples is the one about taking food out of the mouths of babes to pay public pensions. Gimme a break - that's total rubbish
Not that I am saying it is or is not true, but it is real easy to say that ALL state and local workers are overpaid... and I bet there are a number of people who do say this.... 
