Factcheck: Are federal workers overpaid?

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.tucsonsentinel.com/nationworld/report/120210_factcheck_federal_pay

Both sides in great pay debate are misleading the public

Posted Dec 2, 2010, 7:45 am

Factcheck.org

President Barack Obama’s recent announcement to freeze the pay of federal civilian workers did little to ice the debate over whether federal workers are overpaid or underpaid. Republican leaders and conservative think tanks claim federal workers are overpaid. They say the average federal worker is paid twice as much as those in the private sector. The federal Office of Personnel Management and unions that represent federal workers say on average they are paid 24 percent less than those in the private sector.

Both sides are armed with official government statistics, but neither side is right.

Senator-elect Rand Paul of Kentucky, for example, said recently: “The average federal employee makes $120,000 a year. The average private employee makes $60,000 a year." This has become a GOP talking point and the basis for the House Republicans’ call for a hiring freeze in the "Pledge to America." But it’s misleading.

The analysis is based on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis and crudely done by dividing total compensation (salary and benefits) by the number of current federal civilian employees. Comparing such averages is quite misleading, for two reasons:

* First, BEA says the figure is inflated by including compensation that is actually paid to benefit retirees, not just for current workers. The figure is at least several thousand dollars too high, by our calculations.
* Second, the average federal civilian worker is better educated, more experienced and more likely to have management or professional responsibilities than the average private worker.

Officially, the Office of Personnel Management says federal civilian workers on average are paid 24 percent less than private workers — a figure based on surveys conducted by the Bureau of Labor Statistics and often cited by unions and their Democratic allies. But this is misleading, too. The BLS surveys don’t include the cost of benefits — which both sides agree are more generous for federal workers. Experts also say there are other flaws in OPM’s methodology that prevent a true apples-to-apples comparison.

The last time the federal government undertook an in-depth analysis to compare federal and private-sector pay was in 1990. Howard Risher, the managing consultant on that 1990 report, says the data doesn’t exist today to support either side in the great pay debate. Risher recently wrote in Government Executive magazine that "we truly don’t know" which side is right because "neither has detailed job-to-job comparisons to support their arguments."

FULL story at link.

[YOY]

1. I prefer to check whether Private Sector are underpaid.

The interesting thing is I bet that they are putting in everyone who works private versus public in those stats. They include the underemployed and the droves of retail workers as well as commission based pay jobs.

[Hello_Kitty]

3. Yep.

And the droves of people on DU defending the pay freeze don't get that.

[WhiteTara]

2. I remember the when the pubs wanted

to raise the federal worker salary because we couldn't keep good employees and were losing them to the private sector.

[Hello_Kitty]

4. It's part of the GOP's sustained attack on public services and public ownership of the commons

They want to privatize everything and demonizing public workers helps to sell that idea.

[ItNerd4life]

5. Your 2nd argument is totally bogus and stupid.

It sounds like the federal government has way too much management then and not enough workers.