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You often hear that union workers, particularly federal workers, are “overpaid.” You can produce a study making this case. But it will ultimately be an apples-to-oranges study.
If you compare organized federal employees, many of whom have college degrees, to unorganized service-sector and retail workers, then yes, you will find higher wages in the public sector. But if you do an apples-to-apples comparison between public employees and their private-sector counterparts in related fields, you will find that the public sector is significantly undervalued.
And because federal employees, at least, have suffered under a wage freeze that’s going on three years, that wage gap has increased.
White-collar federal employees are underpaid on average by about 35 percent compared with the private sector, a widening of the “pay gap,” which stood at about 26 percent last year, an advisory group said Friday.
The Federal Salary Council based that number on data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics that by law are supposed to be used in setting annual General Schedule pay raises [...]
“This clearly shows that there is a pay gap and that federal employees are underpaid,” said J. David Cox, president of the American Federation of Government Employees and a council member. “Hopefully, we can get back to reasonable cost-of-living adjustments and work on the pay gap.”
“I think on federal pay there’s too much misinformation and fiction out there,” said Colleen M. Kelley, president of the National Treasury Employees Union and also a council member. “There’s a very long history to this methodology. Even if someone wants to argue with what the number is, it’s important to address that there is a gap and it continues to grow. There’s no way to make the number zero, if you’re basing it on facts.”
You cannot lump together those who clean up the National Mall and those who work on scientific breakthroughs at the National Institute of Health, compare them to the “average worker,” and come up with a legitimate pay scale for federal employees. You have to go sector by sector and find the appropriate comparison in the private sector. And when you do that work, you see that federal employees are underpaid. This has an impact on millions of hard-working Americans, who are forced to take less than their skills would bring them back in the open market, because of a foolish tendency toward austerity and the demonizing of public workers.
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Republican talking points often reflect an alternate reality. I am under the impression that this whole thing boils down to conservatives hating on women.
I was surprised when Scott Walker demonized State employees for high wages. The common view point around me was that working for the government was a career downgrade, where people traded professional opportunity for a steady paycheck, good health and retirement benefits. (This led to the demonizing of government employees as incompetent because they could not be fired.)
The Republicans upped the ante when they suddenly wanted to pay government employees less, and lessen their pensions and benefits.
A safe job to raise kids with is often a Woman’s choice. I wonder what percentage of government employees, (excluding police and firemen!), are women?
This from PolitiFact: “To the extent there have been excessive job losses among women, a lot of it has to do with the fact that there has been an enormous reduction in state and local government employment,” Bartlett said. “The decline … has been especially pronounced in this recession as opposed to other recessions.”
This chart from the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-backed group, bears that out. In earlier recessions, public-sector jobs began increasing again as the economy stabilized. After the most recent recession, they have continued to disappear. Again, these are jobs heavily held by women.
Bartlett added that many of those government jobs were eliminated in states controlled by Republican governors and legislatures.”
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2012/apr/10/mitt-romney/romney-campaign-says-women-were-hit-hard-job-losse/
Was salary the only thing looked at, or total compensation plus things like job security and productivity?
I have worked for state government and I have worked in the private sector.
I am all for public sector workers–indeed all workers– being treated equitably.
I think you have to look at the whole picture before deciding whether or not they are being treated equitably though.
Among many other things, the due process clause does not protect workers in the private sector and federal employees don’t have to worry about their employer going bankrupt, etc. That kind of job security is worth something, no?
Yeah, this post doesn’t smell right to me. I had a Federal GS-9 job for a while and the starting pay was comparable to pvt. sector jobs w/the same requirements as to education, etc. And the benefits and job security were a lot better.
I don’t really know, but I have colleagues in Fed Govt jobs that are very similar to mine, and some of them make a lot more than me. Plus their benefits are better, including higher pensions + better health care benefits.
I think it depends on a lot of factors. That said, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if citizens who get Fed govt jobs NOW get less pay & benefits than do those who’ve been employed in the fed govt for decades (as most of my friends/collegues have been).
It’s the same with the CA State system. Those who’ve been in for a long time will get out with great pension & benefits. Those being hired now will probaby be paid less and end up with much less in terms of pension & possible health benefits.
The only problem is with 1/3 of the country now working freelance with no benefits Federal employers are way ahead of us.
So down it is for the worker in America.
The only people making out are the top and those that haven’t been laid off in the past four years and therefor haven’t had the salary cut the rest of us have taken.
You can,maybe, argue the pay comparability bit but, as DDay says, you have to go by comparable job descriptions. I was a Federal employee back in the day, er, the decade, ok, several many decades ago. Started as a 9 out of law school and ended as a 12 . Back then I could clearly say my salary was not comparable to what the privates were paying. Believe it or not, with my graduate law degree, and starting as a “mid-level” hire, I was paid under 9K around 1970.
My daughter now works for the Feds, and is a first class mind, with terrific efficiency and productivity skills. I don’t know if she’s over or under paid (makes more that I ever did, that’s for sure), but it’s true she has been under the wage freeze.
What gets me, and it’s not the pay, it’s the “demonization” thing. It’s wrong, it’s cheap shots and it panders to the Randian-minded dolts who diss everything to do with government. And I don’t see many dems, Obama included, going out of their way to stick up for workers.
Actually, the whole ‘bash govt employees’ things, pisses me off to the max. Who do they thinks is going to make the government function, some elves that sneak in at night?
How about laying off ordinary folks and going after the obscene CEO’s and the like who have been stealing our wealth and acting like they’re doing us a favor. Talk about misplaced priorities. Screw the plutocrats and the elephants and donkeys they rode in on.
State employees as well.
Absolutely.
There is definitely some waste in the public sector, but that said, there is ALSO a LOT of waste in the private sector. I can say that as someone who has worked pretty much equally in both sectors.
Some of the cuts in the public sector in CA were, in truth, probably needed, as some depts had gotten really out of hand. That said, wholesale dissing of the public sector is also out of control, esp, as you say, when the egregious salaries, benefits, perks & lurks of the 1% in the private sector continues to go pretty much *unremarked* as IF it’s just all hunky-spunky & makes all the sense in the world.
It IS some Randian fantasy that ONLY the private sector makes sense and makes money “properly” for the “properly deserving” people. There are loads of ways in which it makes much more sense for the govt to be running something. Privatization has often resulted in less service for more money with some fat-cat ripping off the top.
Annoying to say the least. And why so many citizens, including sometimes those who work in the public sector (no less), buy this crap is beyond me. But buy it they do, sad to say.
The Government needs the private sector to provide the tax revenue to operate, and it can only hire and pay as much as taxes brings in plus the amount borrowed against future revenue.
We’ve now reached a point where the debt is too high. So we have a choice, one of which could be to cut the amount of government workers, or cutting their pay, or both. . .
another solution could be a smaller more productive government workforce that has higher pay per employee.
I’d prefer a smarter, smaller, higher paid, more productive, and cheaper overall government.
I’d prefer the Mitt Romneys of the country paying the same % of income in federal taxes as middle class workers. Then we could have an adequate government and private sector jobs.
I worked for the USPS in Minneapolis from late 1988-1995. I was a DCS-18 Computer Programmer/Analyst. I had vocational school training and was a certified instructor in Programming and Operations with Control Data Corporation before going to the USPS. When I left the USPS, my salary was $44,217/year. The benefits were good and if I would have stayed until retirement age, I would have maxed out at my level at about $55,000/year.
I’m sure I could have done better in private industry, but after getting the axe at CDC during the IT industry downturn in the 80s and taking a 40% pay cut at Deluxe Check Printers for a year, I was ready for a little job security.
Don’t believe all the bullshit about lazy overpaid Postal workers. Some of the brightest, most talented, and hardest working people I knew were Postal employees. The prejudice, ignorance, and deliberate misinformation about most government workers is appalling and unwarranted.
Government employees are the last of the middle class. Once they are destroyed, the last of the people whose spending drives the economy will have been destroyed.
They don’t want the government to function.
Why the same percentage? Why not a greater percentage?
The very rich use and have used more of the nation’s resources than anyone else. They can never compensate for the rivers and air they have polluted, the highways and bridges they have worn out, etc. Paying more is only fair.
The federal work force has been reduced.
I honestly don’t know if the post smells or not. I was only asking questions and pointing out that you cannot go by salary alone.
Compensation includes a whole variety of things besides salary, including bonuses (in the private sector usually), vacation time, sick days, health insurance, pension, etc.. And then, productivity is an issue.
And no one has job security like federal and state employees. Ask the people at Enron how good their pensions are today.
I don’t know what DD compared, so I am not saying he is wrong. I am just saying, please be sure you look at everything before reaching any conclusion about who is compensated better overall.
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Yes, but then you don’t just compare pay, you have to compare the total package in pay, fringe benefits, job security, working conditions, travel requirements, etc.
The way to compare all of those things together is to compare quit rates. By that measure it appears that federal employees are better compensated that similarly credentialed private sector workers.
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The problem with government employees is we don’t see or remember the hard working productive employees. We see the DMV employe that goes on break just as we get to the front of the line not the one next to him/her that is working through their break. The postal empolyee that shuts the gate just as we get to the front of the line, not the one stay until midnight on April 14 to post mark our tax returns or the group that writes the Santa letters. We don’t understand when a low level employee is enforcing the letter of a law that has many unintended consequences because they have no flexibility because it is a LAW. When we get lousy service in the private sector we feel more in control because we can go to a different store. We all wish we could have all the federal holidays off. And many of us have had significant wage cuts. This what makes it easy to demonize government workers, even though it is unjustified.
The rich only use the rivers and air because we buy the stuff they are selling. Utilities don’t make power just for fun. Oil companies don’t drill for oil just for fun (although working on a drillrig and seeing the rocks brought up from 3 miles down is kind of fun if you are a nerdy geologist).