Posted on 12/11/2009 11:52:00 AM PST by SeekAndFind
Even as federal employees' salaries are growing robustly, the president's pay czar Kenneth Feinberg has imposed new limits on executive compensation at AIG, Citigroup, General Motors, and GMAC, all recipients of government bailouts. Salaries will be limited to $500,000 in cash, and bonuses will be tied to "real achievement of objective goals."
Chris Edwards at CATO—who has done quite a lot of independent analysis of federal pay—puts this story in context and adds some juicy details from his own data. Most remarkably, there are fully 383,000 federal workers earning six-figure salaries and 22,000 earning salaries of over $170,000. And these numbers don't even include the $41,000 in non-salary benefits the average federal employee receives each year.
* * *
There may be 7.3 million Americans out of a job in this economy, but it’s happy days for federal employees. The number of civil servants making $100,000 or more has jumped over 46 percent since the start of the recession.
The most dramatic increase came in the Transportation Department, where the number of employees earning salaries of over $170,000 jumped from one to a whopping 1,690 in just a year and a half. The growth was triggered by rules that prevent top employees in a given department from making more than their bosses. In this case, when Congress raised the Federal Aviation Administrator's salary, it triggered raises for nearly 2,000 of his subordinates.
The Defense Department also saw a salary explosion when new merit-pay rules took effect—and there turned out to be a whole lot more merit around the Pentagon than Congress expected. The result was a five-fold increase in the number of defense officials earning $150,000 or more.
Across the board, the salary bonanza has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.
Overall, the recession has been a boon for the Beltway crowd. We related last week that the Washington metropolitan area received nearly 10 times as much stimulus money per capita as the national average, keeping the unemployment rate in the area at 6.2 percent, far below rates of other large cities—9.3 percent in New York; over 10 percent in Chicago, Atlanta and Los Angeles—and the national average of 10.2 percent.
Recovery Act funding alone has fed the creation of 407,000 government contract jobs—or two thirds of all jobs "created" under the Act—according to one independent analysis. And during a time when most businesses are downsizing, the federal government itself actually grew by 13,000 employees in the last year—the first increase since the 1970s.
And the trend continues. We previously indicated that last week's jobs report wasn't nearly so positive as it looked (because the stats were juked), but what little real job creation there was occurred almost entirely in the government and education sectors.
tell us again about how you would "gladly" live elsewhere?......
nonsense....you've got it made...
just don't be criticizing SS or Medicare or union workers at GM and other industries......the govt pay and pensions system is far more obscene and odorous....
Not for long. Flyover country is getting close to lock and load time.
If it weren’t for all this government compensation, suburban Maryland would be a Third World country.
Maryland “Freak State” PING!
The private sector includes people working at Wal-Mart and McDonalds, etc. who make $8.10 an hour...these workers don't have a government analogue.
If we're going to launch a complaint about salaries, at least make sure we're truly comparing apples to apples.
humm as a federal employee my salary is approx $10,000 less then last year...where did I go wrong....
These quotes were taken from actual Federal (US) employee performance evaluations...
“Since my last report, this employee has reached rock bottom and has started to dig.”
“His men would follow him anywhere, but only out of morbid curiosity”
“I would not allow this employee to breed”
“This employee is really not so much of a has-been, but more of a definite won’t be”
“Works well when under constant supervision and cornered like a rat in a trap”
“When she opens her mouth, it seems that it is only to change feet”
“He would be out of his depth in a parking lot puddle”
“This young lady has delusions of adequacy”
“He sets low personal standards and then consistently fails to achieve them”
“This employee is depriving a village somewhere of an idiot”
“This employee should go far, and the sooner the better”
“Got a full 6-pack, but lacks the plastic thing to hold it all together”
“A gross ignoramus - 144 times worse than an ordinary ignoramus”
“He certainly takes a long time to make his pointless”
“He doesn’t have ulcers, but he’s a carrier”
“I would like to go hunting with him sometime”
“He’s been working with glue too much”
“He would argue with a signpost”
“He has knack for making strangers immediately”
“He brings a lot of joy whenever he leaves the room”
“When his IQ reaches 50, he should sell”
“If you see 2 people talking and one looks bored, he’s the other one”
“A photographic memory but with the cap over the lens”
“A prime candidate for natural deselection”
“Donated his brain to science before he was done using it”
“Gates are down, the lights are flashing, but the train isn’t coming”
“Has 2 brains, one is lost, the other is out looking for it”
“If he were any more stupid, he’d have to be watered twice a week”
“If you give him a penny for his thoughts, you’d get change”
“If you stand close enough to him, you can hear the ocean”
“It’s hard to believe that he beat out 1,000 other sperm”
“One neuron short of a synapse”
“Some drink from the fountain of knowledge, he only gargled”
“Takes him 12 hours to watch 60 Minutes”
“The wheel is turning, but the hamster is dead”
Indeed. Comparing two groups without selecting so that apples (technical and legal jobs in government) are compared to apples (engineers and lawyers in private business) and not to oranges (e.g. janitors and stoop-labor harvesters) is simply lying with statistics.
In addition to this bit of statistical chicanery, there are several others. Precisely because the government back-loads its compensation by paying bigger pensions later so that it can get away with paying smaller salaries now, civil servants tend to stay in those jobs longer than the private-market average, thus artificially skewing the comparison by falsely equating relatively senior employees among the former with relatively junior ones among the latter.
Really, there are enough legitimate grounds for complaint about government. Introducing specious ones such as this is to engage in boy-who-cried-wolf undercutting of one's own position.
I just signed on with the FDIC in Dallas (2 year contract). Beats the heck out of $400 a week for unemployment. Let's face it: the feds are the only game in town when it comes to hiring.
Private companies that are hiring are really putting the screws on pay. I just received an offering for a senior tax position, starting at $52K, with minimal benefits.
Companies are not hiring anyone over 45, unless you want to work for rock bottom. Thanks, but I'll suck wind for two years, with the chance for decent promotions during that time, with full benefits to include 10 paid holidays and 3-4 weeks paid vacation every year.
Oh yeah...when there is work beyond 40 hours, I'll be paid time-and-a-half.
Sorry for sounding so jaded, but the past six years have been a beyotch in the private sector, and I just don't see improvement in that regard as long as Obama and the Dems are running things.
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