Another article in USA Today again claims that federal pay is significantly higher than private sector pay. Federal employees have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years consecutive years, forcing the compensation gap to double over the past decade, the article states.
Civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009, while private sector workers made an average of $61,051 in total compensation and benefits, according to a USA Today analysis.
In May, I blogged about a report by the National Association of Colleges and Employers that found that IT graduates are seeing much higher salaries in their private sector entry-level jobs. For example, graduates earning computer science degrees received starting salaries of $60,426 this year, NACE found. That's definitely higher or comparable to what federal IT workers, many of whom have graduate degrees, would earn at the GS-7 or GS-9 pay levels. So are USA Today's attacks on federal workers, particularly those with advanced degrees and such specialized skills as IT and cybersecurity, fair?
COMMENTS
"...lies, damned lies, and statistics." There can be no direct comparison at a high level between the private sector population in general, and the civil service population in specific. The private sector has many MANY low-paying service jobs that have no equivalent in the civil service, and it brings down their average. The civil service is massively white collar specialist labor (WGs notwithstanding) and compared to our private sector counterparts of equivalent training, experience and specialization, most of us are making less. Considerably less. This was backed up by a government study years ago, and in fact, resulted in Congressional law that civil service salaries needed to be RAISED nearly 20% to "catch up" to private sector equivalent market rates...with a plan to raise us a little bit every year until we achieved parity.
And every year, every President found a way to avoid raising civil service pay the percentage required by that law, because of some ongoing "emergency"--so they basically ignored Congress and kept us making less than our counterparts.
And WILL: although there are a few programs that result in a few individuals climbing the ranks from GS-7 to GS-12 in a few years...I will tell you my own journey took nearly 15 yrs. to make that same climb...and the same for most of my peers--the ones that made it that high before topping out.
TRCIII 08/13/10 09:34 am ET
Yes, completely fair. Federal workers start at pay levels slighly lower than or comparable to public sector workers. But the tremendous salary increases in the first few years (GS-7 to GS-12 in three years) and the vastly better benefit and time off policies give the feds a distinct advantage quickly and for the rest of their careers. The practices must stop. We need dramatically fewer federal employees.
Will 08/11/10 10:54 am ET
Call the CATO institute at (202) 842 0200; demand a copy of its Form 990, which by law, it must provide. Check out the reported salaries; average is $189K.
Deanne Williams 08/10/10 08:33 pm ET