Feds Earn 78% More Than Private Sector Workers, Study Finds

Government Executive ^ | 10/6/15 | Eric Katz

[skeeter]

Nothings greedier that the average lard-assed bureaucrat.

[vbmoneyspender]

Federal employees tend to be better educated and work in jobs that require higher skill levels compared to non-federal jobs . . .

I believe Gov't agencies at all levels encourage workers to get college degrees even if they are not germane to the work the worker is doing so that the agencies can make the exact same argument made here that gov't workers deserve more because they are 'better' educated.

[Chode]

of course they do, they won the job lottery

[conservative cat]

Yep. I have family working in it, and they complain, but they have it better than the rest of us.

[gaijin]

Well-paid OCCUPIERS.

The well-heeled State against the threadbare Nation.

[PAR35]

the average federal employee earns about $119,000 annually, compared to the private sector worker who earns $67,000 per year. When comparing just salaries, feds collect 50 percent bigger paychecks, Edwards said.

Intellectually dishonest scholarship.

While it may well be that federal employees are over compensated compared to private sector (and I suspect they may be, since private industry has chopped health and retirement benefits), you can't prove it from this analysis. Compare like jobs - accountants to accountants, lawyers to lawyers, secretaries (does anyone still have those?) to secretaries, doctors to doctors, loan officers to loan officers, etc.

I do think we have enough evidence to conclude that the author of this study is overpaid compared to government workers.

[utford]

They make up for it by putting in 78% less effort than private sector employees

[4Runner]

What’s the point of linking to the article if you are going to go ahead and post the entire article anyway as you have, and waste expensive bandwidth, instead of just posting a few lines as an excerpt, as is required by FR guidelines?

[PAR35]

Any easy way to cut average federal pay would be to go back to the draft, and pay soldiers the inflation adjusted equivalent of what they were paid in World War II.

[madprof98]

Obviously this couldn’t be true because the President himself told us - shortly after his inauguration - that “public servants” such as himself took a HUGE pay cut and worked countless hours for the greater good of the nation. Would such a valiant American hero lie to us???

[butlerweave]

and the Billions wasted on Obama’s Czars + their staff + offices + transport

[Secret Agent Man]

I worked there.

That is hardly a generalized truth. In certain areas yes. In a larger majority, no.

[COBOL2Java]

They make up for it by putting in 78% less effort than private sector employees

How many private-sector jobs allow nappy time?

[vbmoneyspender]

You worked where?

[markomalley]

What’s the point of linking to the article if you are going to go ahead and post the entire article anyway as you have, and waste expensive bandwidth, instead of just posting a few lines as an excerpt, as is required by FR guidelines?

Thank you so much for the lesson in posting articles. Greatly appreciated.

BTW, if you review the Updated FR Excerpt and Link Only or Deny Posting List due to Copyright Complaints, you will note that govexec.com is not on the excerpt and link list.

If, at some point, it is added to that list, then I'll post excerpts.

(Oh, and as for the wasting bandwidth, I am a dollar-a-day person...are you?)

[BBell]

That is true. No degree, no promotion. A lot of trivial jobs require you to have a degree. It does not matter if you are educated beyond your intelligence.

You can be the smartest person out there or even a college dropout (Steve Jobs,Bill Gates, Zuckerberg,Michael Dell,Marc Rich, Ty Warner,Jack Taylor,etc.) and you will not get promoted without a degree. That is if you get hired in the first place.

The problem with the government is that it equates a degree with actually being smart. Which we we all know is not true. I would venture to say that most government employees could not make it in the private sector. And these same bureaucrats regulate the private sector.

[St_Thomas_Aquinas]

I have a friend who works for the Corps of Engineers, issuing permits for wetland development. He always complains about how builders are in a hurry for their permits.

They really have no idea what life is like in the world of cause and effect.

[txrefugee]

Parasites who are killing their hosts. Trump should promise that he will
cut entire agencies to reduce federal employment by 50%. We can no
deprive our own families so these fat cats can make the seven counties
surrounding Washington D.C. the richest in the nation.

[mikey_hates_everything]

Then you retire and make even more as a Federal contractor pulling a pension or just be a contractor your whole career still making more than Federal workers. Why didn’t the study include that group?