Peter Orszag, Director of the Office of Management and Budget, defended federal employees' salaries yesterday."I think the key thing to remember about that is the federal workforce is more highly educated than the private workforce," Orszag said. "Roughly a third of the private workforce has a college degree, for example, [while] well over 50 percent of the federal workforce [does]."Orszag also noted that "as people gain more experience, pay tends to increase," and the federal government has a highly experienced workforce. "Basically the entire delta between private sector and public sector federal government average pay can be explained by education and experience," he said.
Orszag was responding to a spate of newspaper articles showing that government workers made more than private sector employees. But his analysis is dishonest, as this report from USA Today shows.
Overall, federal workers earned an average salary of $67,691 in 2008 for occupations that exist both in government and the private sector, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data. The average pay for the same mix of jobs in the private sector was $60,046 in 2008, the most recent data available.These salary figures do not include the value of health, pension and other benefits, which averaged $40,785 per federal employee in 2008 vs. $9,882 per private worker, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.
For the same jobs with the same education level, government workers still take in almost $8,000 more than private sector workers. And that disparity is actually much higher if you take into account benefits. And as anyone who knows anyone who works for the government will tell you, public sector workers are promoted quickly even if they're doing very little work. Right now the government is looking is to hire up to 100,000 new employees, even as most businesses are laying people off and cutting salaries. And with Obama looking to expand the government as far as possible, that number could rise even higher.
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