There is a lot of misinformation floating around about the size of federal pensions. I won't address state and local pensions as there are so many different types that any all in one average is useless - plus I know nothing about them
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When you Google "average size of federal pensions," you get lots of hits that address Congressional pensions only. There is a lot of understandable outrage about those and they are calculated on a different formula than regular feds. We are talking about a total of 535 people - out of 2.75 million civilian federal employees in 2010 (not counting military). Given the net worth of your average congressman or senator, I'm not sure anyone, including themselves, would complain about doing away with their share
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Let's just look at non-congressional feds. Feds whose salaries are above $150,000 make up only 2.8% of the federal workforce (higher step GS-15s and above). Most of these folks are highly educated professionals with masters degrees in critical jobs. If you take a look at the salaries if the top 2.8% income earners in the private sector it's easy to see there is no comparison to the income of the top 2.8% of the federal workforce. For the feds, these are the most visible people to the public and those who earn the highest pensions.
As of 2006 (latest official OPM stats), the average federal salary was about $65K. There have been 4 small increases since then. The trend of wage grade employees (those who earn the least), those who work with their hands, not just their brains, has steadily decreased over the past 20 years, concentrating federal pay in the higher paying grades. The number of CSRS (older and more generous program) is now less than 20% of all feds, the other 80%+ of whom are covered by FERS. The average age of feds at retirement is currently 60 years of age and rising, as FERS employees, who will depend on SS for a larger portion of their retirement income, start to leave. For 2007, The average monthly benefit for CSRS retirees was about $2,600 and for FERS retirees about $950; survivor benefits average about $1,200 and $400, respectively.
The highest retirement benefits go to those who receive the highest salaries and work the longest
- which is as it should be. It's not unusual for an SES with 35 years for service to receive over $100K a year in retirement (under CSRS) - note that there are less than 7,500 SES positions in all of government and about 40% of those are political in nature - those folks do not generally serve long enough to even receive a pension.
All this leads to the fact that, while federal pensions may seem high to those to have no pension or lost one becaue their companies went bankrupt, the average federal pension, to include the fact that 75% of people currently drawing them are from the older CSRS system, is about $32K a year and will drop as more FERS retirees join the retired roles.
Maybe you consider $32K for a 30 year or more career a lot - I don't. CSRS is gone, FERS is much less generous and has been in place for 26 years. Federal pensions do not need more changes. They are no longer generous by any means. And, not to belabor the point, each of us has made their own bed and has to lay in it. Trying to pull the covers off others because we are unhappy with the decisions we made is petty and motivated by sour grapes. You can deny it all you want, but, when things were booming in the '90s, most people didn't give a hoot about what fedes earned or retired with. In fact, friends I knew under FERS boasted regularly that they made more in their TSP every month than they did in salary earnings. They could not understand why most of us did not switch when we had the chance. Other friends in private industry thought I was nuts for sticking with the fed when I could have easily made a LOT more working for defense contractors. Now they know why
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