Nothing horribly went wrong, it reflects changing times in the private sector due to globalism and free trade. The proper comparison is majority of fed workers are technical and office workers. Compare that pay ratio to its equivalent counterpart in private sector the pay ratio drops to below 2 to 1. Add the fact more than 2/3 of the fed workforce is over 50 years old or on the job for 20+ years, the pay increases and COLA will add up. Compatible comparisons and the ratio is about even. The numbers get tricky with senior management. Consider the number of workers, number of facilities and budgets they are responsible for the senior management of many agencies are equivalent to corporate America. There are no multi million dollar salaries execs in the government. If you factor this into the comparison, the fed pay is below private sector.
Private industry is mainly young and in their 30’s, people do not work in the same place to accrue larger salaries because private industry will fire anyone who stays too long and replace them with lower cost college grads. Now add offshoring jobs and H-1B worker to the mix, and suddenly the higher paying private sector is now lagging and falling behind the public sector because no one can stay in the same job long enough.
Government jobs were always available to college grads and private workers to apply, but during booming times no one wanted it because they could make more in the private sector. Fast foward 20 years, the government entry level worker is like the turtle in the rabbit and hare fable. Time in job is what allows the fed to attain a higher salary while the private sector worker goes thru a saber tooth salary pattern. What I mean is there are events in the private sector that is beyond the control of the private sector worker. Example merger and acquisitions can force layoffs, the worker laid off must find another job and many times he/she must start slightly lower to prove themselves in the new company before they recover the salary loss of the last job, and before that person can stay long enough, another crisis occurs and the company will layoff workers and the person will start the whole process all over, loss salary, reprove worth in new company, recover salary, start to progress and then another crisis hits and the process starts all over again. This is why it is call a saber tooth career and salary pattern. This will end when the worker approaches late 40’s and age discrimination kicks in as companies want a young and vibrant image, and a college kid with the latest knowledge and lower salary can displace the older workers. Now the older tech/office worker, if lucky can find a job to finish his career, and such job is usually in a smaller company that pays about 1/3 less with little or no benefits.
The only way a private sector worker can avoid this fate is to make it into management, especially in the executive inner management and staff where your CEO patron can screw up and everyone still gets a bonus and be shielded from layoffs.
Having spent some time in DC, you could fire 90% of the nonmilitary Federal employees and NEVER miss them. Do we really need a FEDERAL department of education or energy?
Government doesn’t create jobs, it creates liabilities.
>Nothing horribly went wrong, it reflects changing times in the private sector due to globalism and free trade.
I disagree, free trade should have little impact on the US-government other than generating importation-taxes & tariffs. Globalism, as defined by dictionary.com is: “the attitude or policy of placing the interests of the entire world above those of individual nations” - this is CONTRARY to the purpose of our government, which is to maximize our INDIVIDUAL freedoms and liberties.
Simply put, globalism is to government what the environmentalism-movement is to the environment: they care little about the environment and want only to control you. It is morally equivalent for a government-worker to be a globalist as it is for someone to say they are concerned about Africa and yet never do anything IN Africa, even second-hand.
>The proper comparison is majority of fed workers are technical and office workers.
Are you disqualifying contractors from your statement here, or including them? That statement also doesn’t address work-ethic/efficiency: the government could ‘create’ technical jobs by classifying the tasks a copy-boy does as technical and breaking it up into a job for: loading paper into the machine, loading toner into the machine, making copies, destroying copies, and repairing the machine.
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>The only way a private sector worker can avoid this fate is to make it into management, especially in the executive inner management and staff where your CEO patron can screw up and everyone still gets a bonus and be shielded from layoffs.
Eh, and what does it take to get fired from a government job? John Murtha can apparently slander ANYBODY with impunity because he is a ‘federal employee.’ Rangle can ignore the very tax-laws he wrote. The head of the Department of Homeland Security can say “the system worked” when it is manifestly obvious that it did NOT work. The Congress can pass contra-constitutional laws with impunity: this health-care bill, retroactive taxations, bills of attainder, and so forth.