Government Workers Not Overpaid

[Quantum Windbag]

Speaking as a former government employee I have to agree that they (we) were not overpaid.

Once upon a time civil service was something that was honorable.

Why and when did all that change?

Maybe it changed when civil servants stopped being civil.

 

[Ravi]

Speaking as a former government employee I have to agree that they (we) were not overpaid.

Once upon a time civil service was something that was honorable.

Why and when did all that change?

Maybe it changed when civil servants stopped being civil.

No, I think it was when Ronnie made it bad to be a government employee.

I was always civil.

 

[Picaro]

I've never had a problem with any Federal agency. The Post Office has never lost anything I've ever sent, all my bills get to me regularly, the IRS has always been honest with me in my audits, even finds mistakes in my favor, my mother's SS checks always arrive on time, the roads are in pretty good shape around here, even if the interstates look a little battered, but that is mostly due to NAFTA traffic tearing up the roads.

The main problem with Federal agencies is that they're understaffed and underfunded, which causes delays that are unnecessary, but those are part of a self-fulfilling circle jerk; cut Federal employees and funds, and then complain of the slow service when dealing with its agencies. Even at that, I get far worse 'service' from private businesses and 'privatized' agencies, like unregulated energy swindlers, unregulated phone companies, etc.

 

[Toro]

The research in this paper investigates whether New Jersey public employees are overpaid at the expense of New Jersey taxpayers. This research is timely. The governor and the editorial board of the New Jersey Star-Ledger, the state’s largest newspaper, claim that public workers earn substantially higher salaries than average workers in the private sector, and the gap in benefits is even wider. Consequently, they are promoting public employee pay freezes, benefits reductions, and major revisions to the rules of collective bargaining as the antidote to the overpayment blight.

The data analysis in this paper, however, indicates that New Jersey public employees, both state and local government employees, are not overpaid. Comparisons controlling for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity, and disability reveal no significant difference between the private and public sectors in the level of employee compensation costs on a per hour basis. However, public employees, particularly higher level professional employees, have fewer opportunities to work overtime than those who work in the private sector. Therefore, on an annual basis, full-time state and local employees are under-compensated by 5.88% in New Jersey, in comparison to otherwise similar private-sector workers.

Are New Jersey Public Employees Overpaid?

State and local public employees are undercompensated, according to a new Economic Policy Institute analysis. The report, Debunking the Myth of the Overcompensated Public Employee: The Evidence by Labor and Employment Relations Professor Jeffrey Keefe of Rutgers University, finds that, on average, state and local government workers are compensated 3.75% less than workers in the private sector.

The study analyzes workers with similar human capital. It controls for education, experience, hours of work, organizational size, gender, race, ethnicity and disability and finds that, compared to workers in the private sector, state government employees are undercompensated by 7.55% and local government employees are undercompensated by 1.84%. The study also finds that the benefits that state and local government workers receive do not offset the lower wages they are paid.

The public/private earnings differential is greatest for doctors, lawyers and professional employees, the study finds. High school-educated public workers, on the other hand, are more highly compensated than private sector employees, because the public sector sets a floor on compensation. The earnings floor has collapsed in the private sector.

The Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and the DC-based Center for Economic Policy Research are also releasing a study today, which echoes the national findings of Debunking the Myth of the Overcompensated Public Employee at a regional level. PERI’s report, The Wage Penalty for State and Local Government Employees in New England finds a “wage penalty” for state and local government workers in New England of almost 3%.

http://epi.3cdn.net/5ac7364828b94bd6f3_8km6bxwby.pdf

Critics of government pay levels point to a Bureau of Labor Statistics report finding that state and local government employees earn 43 percent more per hour, taking wages and benefits together, than private-sector workers — $39.81 versus $27.73. But two University of Wisconsin professors call that an inapt comparison because government employees have college or advanced degrees at twice the rate of private-sector workers — 55 percent to 27 percent.

Taking Aim at Public Workers - NYTimes.com

In this report we use publicly available data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, along with an established methodology used by researchers since the 1970s, to compare worker earnings across and between private, state, and local sectors. We analyze differences in pay between each sector as reported for the last several decades, up to and including the latest estimates. We also estimate the variation of these trends across some of the largest states.

Next, to compare overall compensation across public and private sectors, we describe benefit levels and composition in public and private sectors. The earnings–comparability estimates are adjusted to include benefits.

The analysis finds that:

Public and private workforces differ in important ways. For instance, jobs in the public sector require much more education on average than those in the private sector. Employees in state and local sectors are twice as likely as their private sector counterparts to have a college or advanced degree.

Wages and salaries of state and local employees are lower than those for private sector workers with comparable earnings determinants (e.g., education). State employees typically earn 11 percent less; local workers earn 12 percent less.

Over the last 20 years, the earnings for state and local employees have generally declined relative to comparable private sector employees.

The pattern of declining relative compensation remains true in most of the large states we examined, although some state-level variation exists.

Benefits (e.g., pensions) comprise a greater share of employee compensation in the public sector.

State and local employees have lower total compensation than their private sector counterparts. On average, total compensation is 6.8 percent lower for state employees and 7.4 percent lower for local workers, compared with comparable private sector employees.

http://www.slge.org/vertical/Sites/...ds/{03E820E8-F0F9-472F-98E2-F0AE1166D116}.PDF

 

[Oddball]

Government Workers Not Overpaid

Since the bulk of them not only produce absolutely skiff for the general economy, and are indeed a drag on it, it's safe to say that most of them are in fact overpaid.

 

[Toro]

Government Workers Not Overpaid

Since the bulk of them not only produce absolutely skiff for the general economy, and are indeed a drag on it, it's safe to say that most of them are in fact overpaid.

 

[editec]

Some of them (particularly the lower skilled workers) are making more than they might otherwise in the public sector without doubt.


How many kids armed only with HC education can find a job in the public sector with bennies that pays as well as an E-1?


Not many, that's for damned sure.

What I suspect is troubling many of us is the truly great retirement bennies many government workers (at all levls!) are getting.

And that's not just the FEDS, that's at the state and local levels, too.

 

[Neubarth]

The simple fact of the matter is that qualification and quantification is not applicable in these comparisons.

Most people try to find adequate compensation for their skill sets. That can be tempered by adjustments in expectations based upon job security. Highly educated Government Employees stay in their jobs even though there is far more money to be made on the outside simply because there is guaranteed job security in the Government. Hence the prosecutor does not seek after the higher potential gain as a criminal defense attorney.

Simple moral to the story, "We get what we expect."

In the Navy when I was a Naval Officer, I altered that to, "We get what we Inspect."

Both phrases hold true.

 

[Bern80]

Having worked in both the public and private sector I would have to say that some government employees are way overpaid than private sector employees doing the same job. Other public sector employees who are higher up the scale and know their job get paid on a decent level and they deserve to get higher pay.

In terms of actual positive work productivity, the public sector employee is way less productive than private sector employees. Get three sheets of paper on their desk and they hit the panic button and demand the department hire another worker because this one is overworked. Private sector employees can go through reams of paper, get through several different processing steps and get the finished product out the door and never miss a deadline - even if that deadline is only a couple hours away.

Public sector employees are not expected to think - they just follow the guidelines. Private sector employees are expected to be independent thinkers who can make good, quick decisions on the spur of the moment.

Public sector employees will not start work one minute before 8:30 a.m. and will not work one minute past 4:30 p.m. God forbid a call should come in at 4:29 - it will not be answered. Private sector employees who are conscientious workers will arrive at work early and leave late, work through lunch hours, or whatever it takes to get the job done.

Public sector employees get a hell of a lot of benefits, whereas some private sector employees get no benefits, some benefits, good benefits or damned good benefits.

Public sector employees get more paid holidays than do private sector employees. If "Winnie-the-Pooh Day" was a federal holiday, they would get that off too.

My experience has been that government employees simply can't function in the private sector workplace.

Well Winnie-the-Pooh day would be the last straw for me. That would be the day I quit this bunk public sector job and become a government stooge.

 

[Mr Natural]

There's no such thing as an overpaid worker.

 

[anuthervoice]

I see.

It's not that the Government workers who are actually in the real world in real dollars making just shy of twice what the people who are not government workers make.

It's that the people who are government workers are actually better people than those not in the government and therefore what they make needs to be more and when one sticks one's head far enough up one's arse one is able to see this.

How clever. Thanks for explaining this.

The more educated one is, the more one makes. Someone with a Ph.D. in molecular biology generally makes more money in his job than a high school drop-out who works at 7/11. This should be self-evident. This is as true in the private sector than in the public sector. In fact, it is more so because those at the top of the wage scale get paid astronomically more than those at the bottom, which doesn't happen in the public sector.

Education opens the door, what you do after you step thru that door determines how well you earn a position making a significant salary. True, if you stop at 7-11 and are happy with that pay rate for life, rock on loser.
The people who make money are those that 'make money' for their employers.

 

[Bern80]

There's no such thing as an overpaid worker.

I know what you're trying to say here. Basically that employers pay people what they think they're worth. Whatever they're paid is whatever they're worth, thus they can't be overpaid.

One slight wrinkle gets put into the equation for government workers though. In the private sector ultimately the company or owner decides how much of it's OWN money a person is worth. That is not the case with a government employee. The get to decide how much of someone elses money (John Q. Taxpayer) you're worth. You think you wouldn't pay someone more if the money to pay them is coming off the money tree out back as opposed to your pocket? Government workers are overcompensated because they would likely be compensated at a somewhat lower level in the private sector for the same skills.

 

[editec]

The reason government workers are targets of the pseudo-conservatives' Talking Points Tree is because they're among the last group of workers left whose wages and bennies have been modestly adjusted for inflation for the last 30 years, and serve as an embarrassment to how far behind 'private' sector wages have fallen.

Spot on!

This complaint (about overpaid government workers) serves as an excellent smokescreen so that we are not asking ourselves why PUBLIC SECTOR workers have been consistently losing purchaing power for the last 40 years.

It isn't that government workers are overpaid, it's that so many of us are now so underpaid.

 

[CrusaderFrank]

In fact, adjusted for education and hours worked government workers appear to be underpaid. It is especially true in the professions, such as law, accounting and finance, where people are dramatically underpaid relative to the private market. In my profession - investments - government workers are often paid 10% to 20% of what people make in similar positions in the private sector.

The government’s workforce is more educated than the private workforce. For instance, the government’s “college plus” level is 54%, while all private workforce is 35%. “Some college” is 14% of government workers, 19% of the private workforce. So this is important to control for.

Here is the penalty government workers take when you include all benefits across both categories:

On average, government workers make 3% less total compensation when you control for education levels. As someone who once considered doing regulatory work with his professional Master’s degree work, I can completely agree that there’s a 30%+ pay gap between the public and private sector.

Are Government Employees Overpaid? Still No. Rortybomb

I lost a lot of respect for you.

 

[Toro]

I lost a lot of respect for you.

empiricism > ideology

 

[william the wie]

I lost a lot of respect for you.

empiricism > ideology

Empiricism is an implicit ideology that presumes shared acknowledged goals and I kind of doubt that the two of you share the same goals.

 

[uscitizen]

Hmm that chart could be intrepreted to show that the dumbest ones do best in government?

 

[Samson]

Speaking as a former government employee I have to agree that they (we) were not overpaid.

Once upon a time civil service was something that was honorable.

Why and when did all that change?

Shortly after you were hired?

 

[Samson]

Government workers are still not overpaid relative to the private sector if that is baked in.

The first is an apples-to-apples comparison of workers among education levels. The government’s workforce is more educated than the private workforce. For instance, the government’s “college plus” level is 54%, while all private workforce is 35%. “Some college” is 14% of government workers, 19% of the private workforce. So this is important to control for.

Speaking of "Baked In...."

What degrees does the government workforce have?

I submit that for their to be a fair comparison between public and private pay, then you cannot just compare education levels: A PhD in Regulating Underwater Basketweaving is not going to be worth anything in the Private Sector.

 

[Toro]

Government workers are still not overpaid relative to the private sector if that is baked in.

The first is an apples-to-apples comparison of workers among education levels. The government’s workforce is more educated than the private workforce. For instance, the government’s “college plus” level is 54%, while all private workforce is 35%. “Some college” is 14% of government workers, 19% of the private workforce. So this is important to control for.

Speaking of "Baked In...."

What degrees does the government workforce have?

I submit that for their to be a fair comparison between public and private pay, then you cannot just compare education levels: A PhD in Regulating Underwater Basketweaving is not going to be worth anything in the Private Sector.

The largest classification of government employees are teachers. All teachers have a degree. (Or almost all, anyways.)

Are you implying that taxpayers and society would be better off if only a quarter of all teachers had degrees per the ratio of the public sector, and that we should pay them the average salary of a private worker?