It's August

COMMENTS

• when the fed sector makes twice what the taxpayers earn something is verrrry wrong. Hopefully the media will latch on to it and make fed pay accountable to their efforts. Enough with annual raises and promotions based on attendance

  dan m ketter Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 12:08 AM

• when the average fed makes $120K a year and the taxpayer doesn't even make 1/2 of that something is really wrong.
  Hopefully the state run media will start running with this story and demand that something be done. Annual raises and promotions based on attendance is just obscene

  dan m ketter Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 12:17 AM

• I am not in complete disagreement with CE's case, but this never-resolved, Goldilocks argument about federal pay could use greater objectivity from both sides of the issue. For example, over-emphasizing the importance of impossible-to-monetize factors like quit rates tends to dull the sharp edges of an argument.
  Also, given the general nature of government work and the application of technology to this sort of labor over the past two decades, it's not hard to deduce one important reason for average pay going up -- there are fewer lower graded employees as a result of advances in technology. In addition, citizens expect more from government, and these expectations often involve higher-order (read: higher-graded) competencies.
  CE is very much into privatization, so I'm sure he wouldn't consider this strategy for lowering the average government wage, but how about nationalizing McDonalds and Wendys? Once we add all those minimum wage burger-flippers to the attorneys, scientists, analysts and etc., the average federal wage would surely be substantially lower. Problem solved, right?
  

  EJC in ATL Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 8:14 AM

• Okay full disclosure! Did not read the article. Federal Pay and whether adequate to do the job or inadequate! My guess is that on average federal employees are underpaid by about 1/3 based on the degree of difficulty of the job. Why is this the case because despite my 34 years as "Government Clerk" I was required to deal from the start with all levels of civil service and appointees including OMB and White House staff and be available to brief GAO and OIG staffs and Congressinoal staff on short notice--very short notice. What was I not authorized to do except on request by my superiors and professional ethics rules as a lawyer--never argue your case in the press--and to me this also meant civil litigation--but did talk to the Press from time to time. A bureacratic career to me is captured in part by the writings of CP Snow and Alfred North Whitehead. "Corridors of Power" should have a US civil service version. Somebody more talented than I please write it. And then of course the "Two Cultures" of science and the "other"! Civil Servants are accountable and despite what some think can be easily put on the shelf or even fired. In particular those with Security Clearances as a job requirement are subjected to the fact that removal of clearance for any reason means loss of job. Most civil servants not only experience job changes but boss changes almost if not more frequently than in the private sector. Some of these are by chance and some by law. This provides the discipline and uncertainty that the private sector rewards. Finally of course, the administrative talents and technical requirements of most civil service jobs are difficult to match up in the private sector. Let's take for example an employee of the IRS. I was employed there from 1967 to 1974 with time out for being drafted and serving on active duty. No taxpayers did I meet but only high priced accountants or lawyers some of whom received on an annual basis the entirety of my earnings as a civil servant during my career. At one time PhDs could almost automatically qualify for a GS-12/13, but not now. How many PhD are employed in the private sector at those salaries? My point is that instead of posturing how about a really honest bipartisan study which is free to determine that civil servants are underpaid not overpaid. And oh yes! When drafted earned $95MO instead of my luxurious GS-9 salary as an IRS attorney.

  William R. Cummingr Posted Wednesday, August 26, 2009 9:47 AM

• Dan K continues to get it wrong about what Federal employees make. There can be no valid comparison of average salaries across the entire Federal workforce vs. the entire non-Federal workforce, because the non-Fed group is composed of a huge number of minimum-wage earners, whose small incomes are not offset by the millions a few CEO's make (should top Federal employees - say, Agency or Department heads, be paid millions to bring them up to par with comparable corporate positions?).

  The only valid comparison is on the job-to-job comparison basis which is used to compute the "catch-up" figure - a figure showing that, on a job-to-like-job basis, Federal employees are at least 20% behind thier private enterprise counterparts. Congress passed a law years ago to bring Fed employees up to par with private enterprise, but every President since then has declared an annual "financial emergency" and held Fed. employees to pay raises & locality-differential raises that either held the "catch-up" percentage level or, more often, increased it (Fed employees may be much more than 20% behind by now; being a retiree, I no longer get the regular publications that list the current figure).

  I guarantee you, most Federal employees don't make 120K a year. I was relatively high-graded (GS-13, step 10 Computer Scientist), and my wife was a GS-4 or -5 secretary - when we retired a few years ago, we weren't making 120K total for both of us.

  RichZ Posted Thursday, August 27, 2009 11:06 AM

• Dear Rich read the report if you were a GS 13and a IT person how did you survive?? Don't you need math to survive?? Its obvious that math isn't your friend

  dan m ketter Posted Thursday, August 27, 2009 6:06 PM

• Nice try, Mr Edwards, but the highly partisan CATO Institute screed has been discredited. It doesn't compare apples to apples. It lumps everyone into one class (called Private Sector) and then compares them to federal service. It's an inaccurate metric because the federal service has few (almost no) Blue collar workers who, as a class, draw down the average for the private sector. The composition of the federal workforce is dissimilar to that of the private sector workforce, with 80-90% of the jobs classified as "white collar." White collar jobs comprise somewhere between 46-60% of the private sector jobs. Federal Service also has a disproportionate number of college graduates and persons with advanced degrees, who tend (on average) to earn as much as twice what high school graduates earn in the private sector. The average Federal job also does not include: unskilled labor, commission work, part-time work, or piece work, all of which are "lumped into" the Cato fiction. The Cato study alsow compares disparate levels of longevity in the "job" which impacts compensation. A more appropriate metric would, therefore, be a comparison of earnings by job classification, job longevity, and education.

  
  I would also observe that the median wage is a more appropriate metric than the average- from a pure statistics standpoint.

  So we have now refined the metric to a comparison based on the median (vice the average) of earnings by job classification, job longevity, and education.

  I am genuinely curious to see the results of a legitimate apples-to-apples comparison would disclose in this matter, so you be sure to get back to me when CATO actually decides to do a real study on this issue. I doubt that they will do so because it doesn't fit their agenda, but you never know.

  Cicero Posted Tuesday, September 8, 2009 5:39 AM

• Mr. Ketter is fond of quoting Christopher Edwards' theory that federal employees are paid twice as much as the private sector. A simple review of the analysis, performed by the Cato institute, does leave some doubt as to the accuracy of this assertion. The numbers which underlie the base assertion are subject to dispute and the initial comparison appears to be flawed because it doesn't compare apples-to-apples. This leaves Mr. Edwards (and by extension Mr. Ketter) with the only metric that really concerns them, and that is the fact that people simply aren't quitting the federal service fast enough.

  The flawed argument is this: Because the turnover is not consistent with the totality of the private sector (including McDonalds) then federal employees are not underpaid. This is a strange metric upon which to focus because there are many, non-financial, reasons why people don't change jobs. It also perpetuates the inaccurate analysis performed as the basis for the original argument (thesis)...specifically that they continue to compare apples to oranges.

  One would not expect the turn over rate of the feds to approximate that of the total private sector because (drum roll please) turn over is typically higher in low skill, minimum wage jobs. These types of jobs have (largely) been outsourced by the federal government. I would, therefore, suggest that the appropriate metric, for performing this comparison is (again) by job classification, longevity/experience, and education.

  Do federal lawyers quit at a greater or a lesser rate than those in the private sector? Architects? Engineers? Auditors? Financial Officers? Senior Managers? (This is actually an unfair question... Senior Executive Service members have, traditionally, fled the government in droves to go work for more money in the private sector.) You see it every change in administration. Funny how Mr. Edwards never mentions that fact...

  Mr. Edwards never discusses that fact, neither does he discuss the fact that huge droves of people simply AREN'T leaving comparable jobs in the private sector to work for the feds. Somehow, the metric he SHOULD be looking at eludes him. Where are the sources that show thousands of mid-level and senior executives leaving lucrative jobs in the private sector to come work for the Feds? IF things are as Mr. Edwards states, and the level of compensation is so disparate, you would expect to see people leaving A&E firms, Law firms, and jumping ship from service industry senior management positions, in record numbers, to come work for "Uncle Sugar." We haven't seen proof that such an influx is occurring. While federal hiring is up, there is no evidence (presented) which indicates that this increase is anything more than a normal response to tough economic times and higher unemployment in the private sector.

  Where is the huge surge one would expect to see in the rate of people leaving high paying jobs in the private sector BECAUSE the federal government pays so much more? I cannot speak for Mr. Edwards, but to my mind such proof (from OPM or other legitimate sources) would seem to be fairly conclusive and would certainly drive the nail in the coffin for "pay parity." I wonder why it was omitted?
  

  Cicero Posted Wednesday, September 9, 2009 4:32 AM

• So, why not compare the average salary of a NASA employee to that of a McDonald's employee? Hey, those NASA folks are severly overpaid. Look, their pay is a factor of 10 higher. What gives? It's just as fair a comparison as CATO presents. 98% of all statistics can be made to mean anything.

  anonymous Posted Friday, March 19, 2010 11:12 AM

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