Posted on 11/01/2010 7:14:07 AM PDT by Poundstone
Official numbers released by the government late last week show salaries of federal workers falling slightly farther behind their private-sector counterparts in the last year, by an average of 2.1 percent across the country.
The disparity shows wide variations among the 31 regions where the government compares federal pay with salaries for private-sector jobs in order to determine pay raises. The Washington-Baltimore area, for example, showed among the largest gaps, with federal workers 38 percent behind the private sector.
(Excerpt) Read more at voices.washingtonpost.com ...
-On the other hand, the salary range for current job openings at VA averages $147,000, and has a high of over $200,000-
Where do you get your salary stats? Are you looking at just specialist doctors or all salaries?
Most new hire docs start in the mid 90’s, specialists of course are higher - 15M - 30M additional dollars per year.
The VA has such a difficult time recruiting doctors due to the low salary that specialists are often hired from overseas to fill the gap. I know this because it’s part of my job to pay for these non-US doctors and justify why we are not using US citizens.
Facts are a good things.
And, I worked in private sector until 2002, when my PRIVATE SECTOR company outsourced both my husbands job and my job. He had worked there 27 yrs and I had been there 14. The job I have now is much more technical and demanding and I still don’t make the salary I made in private sector 8 yrs ago, and the benefits are laughable. I don’t know where you folks get the idea that Fed’s have such great bennies....we don’t.
I am very grateful for my job and work hard.
Eh?
“James Sherk is with the Heritage Foundation. So we’ve obviously got a pre-biased study here.”
I have yet to find James Sherk guilty of lying.
Other people NOT part ofthe Heritage Foundation validate what he is saying.
Stop the source mongering!
Some sources tell the truth and James Sherk is one of them unless YOU can prove otherwise.
I see USA Today is the arbiter of all things true and holy.
Don’t be ignorant and emotional about the issue. First one needs to compare the type of job (fed vs private) and years in job. Fed pay with benefits will be less for same type of job and time in job in private industry. However in real life practice Fed worker will make more over time because most private workers never stay in the same job or company more then seven years. People in private industry get laid off or fired every seven or ten years and must restart in new company most likely doing something different. Thus are forced to take pay cut before they build up time and reputation in new job to have salary catch up and exceed salary of last job. In other words private workers salaries over their life time goes up like a saber tooth pattern until they hit late 40’s or early 50’s and then it drops downward if they did not keep up with the education of the specialty/current jobs. Federal workers begin lower but they grow steady with COLA and they tend to stay in their specialty 10 plus years. So if you were an engineer in a private company and you were able to stay the same company for 30 years, your salary and benefit would beat the Fed engineer, but very very few engineers in private industry have such career paths. Reason - private workers are susceptible to layoffs due to corporate mergers and buyouts, offshoring of jobs, illegal immigrants and foreign H-1B workers who will depress wages or eliminate jobs despite record profits. Gov does not face such factors thus their work force can remain on a steady career path and result is the fed worker will make more while the private worker unable to have such a career path in the corporate world would end up making less. Most fed jobs are office jobs and very few are blue collar. Data that show fed workers with about twice of that of private does include all private jobs (blue collar and menial labor). that will skew the comparisons. I do agree with you that in a bad economy, low tax revenues, the federal workers will have their day of reckoning.
And you've sucked the Federal tit your entire life. No bias there.
We're coming for you AND your pension, Poundstone. If I were you I'd practice a bit of burger flipping. You're going to need it.
Federal employees are both over paid and under paid depending on the job and the quality of the employee. Doctors, nurses, lawyers, engineers, computer programmers are underpaid; receptionists, secretaries, clerks are overpaid. When benefits are factored it, the amount of overpayment becomes more marked.
However, the problem of underpayment can be a problem when it comes to attracting quality employees.
That has and is happening in my husband's office.
It’s the numbers from the current online job listing, I just googled it and posted the numbers, the few jobs I looked at were listed as “physician”, so I don’t know if they are general or specialists.
My guess is you could get a good correlation between amount of “overpaid” and jobs that traditionally are filled by liberals.
My son works for the Veterans administration. He is a work horse. He has stated that the people who work under him have no incentive to work hard as they know no matter how they work their jobs are secure...and this is why nothing gets done in good time.
Don’t be ignorant and emotional about the issue.
>>numbers released by the government<<
Nuff said.
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