Avg Federal Pay nearly Double Private Sector
- Thread starter achilles28
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This survey is bogus. There not comparing apples to apples. Most federal employees work for the DOD and have advanced degrees and security clearances and are paid at a 20% discount to what defense contractors make. I know that because I left my DoD job for a contractor job and got a 20% raise.
2012 CBO study, adjusted after education: (page 10).
Federal workers with High school or less earn 36% more then private sector counterparts.
Federal workers with some college earn 32% more then private sector counterparts.
Federal workers with Bachelors Degree earn 15% more then private sector counterparts.
Federal workers with Masters earn 8% more then private sector counterparts
Federal workers with Professional Degree or Doctorate earn 18% LESS then private sector counterparts.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42636.pdf
The Washington Post article on which the ZH article is based, indicated that 27% of the Federal workforce have a highschool diploma, or less.
The article didn't indicate how many Federal workers have a Professional Degree or Doctorate.
Federal workers with High school or less earn 36% more then private sector counterparts.
Federal workers with some college earn 32% more then private sector counterparts.
Federal workers with Bachelors Degree earn 15% more then private sector counterparts.
Federal workers with Masters earn 8% more then private sector counterparts
Federal workers with Professional Degree or Doctorate earn 18% LESS then private sector counterparts.
http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R42636.pdf
The Washington Post article on which the ZH article is based, indicated that 27% of the Federal workforce have a highschool diploma, or less.
The article didn't indicate how many Federal workers have a Professional Degree or Doctorate.
after considering benefits particularly pension etc. and chances of a layoff + increased taxes you took a cut in total in your new job.
To make sense out of comparisons between composite data you have to know the distribution of the components in each composite. Can you find that information? Then you can begin to make some sense of the composite data?
The disconnect that jumped out at me was that "Average Federal Salary" was being compared to "Ave. per capita Income in the U.S." -- why did they bother with a bar chart, I wonder? U.S. per capita income components include both wages and salaries , and there is a monstrous spread, weighted heavily toward the low end. The probability distribution is hugely skewed. On the other hand, "Federal Salaries" does not incorporate hourly wage workers! What is the point of this? Some political objective I suppose. But from any unbiased perspective the comparison being made is absurd.
Then I looked at the zero hedge article and I noticed that they also had a chart comparing median income in D.C. with median income in the U.S. (which includes D.C.) This is a little more reasonable comparison because income is compared with income, and the median is a better measure than the average in this case. This was, however, a shocking comparison to me, since it shows that until 2007 median income in D.C. lagged, on average, median income in the U.S. That's startling when you consider the large number of lawyers and federal employees being paid well in D.C. and the relatively high cost of living there. It suggests that there is an extraordinary number of impoverished people living in D.C.! After 2007, median income in D.C. went up above the median for the whole U.S. This, thankfully, is a much healthier picture. Since D.C. is a high living cost City, it naturally should have a higher than average median income. At least we can see some improvement in that regard since 2007.
It seems the lesson to be learned here is to look at published comparisons with a great deal of skepticism and a very juandiced eye, especially depending on their source!
I have assumed that the charts shown are properly labeled. I big assumption, I know!
The best composite data I could find last night (searched 10 mins) was the CBO study cited earlier that held education constant against salaries and wages. Federal Workers are paid better then private sector counterparts, when educational attainment is held constant, right up until Doctorate or Professional Degree, after which they're paid worse. I didn't get into the nitty gritty details, but CBO compared wages/salaries + benefits. Whether benefits included time off, sick days (bankable?), health insurance etc, is unknown. Iow, I don't know how complete their assessment is. But as we suspected all along, Federal Workers make far more then their public sector counterparts.
Even more interesting would be comparison on teachers versus private sector workers, by State.
Achilles, wouldn't you need to compare public sector teachers with private sector teachers? I think public sector are paid more on average. But I don't know about the median. I think i'd want more if I had to teach in a public high school rather than a private one. One might deserve hazardous duty pay. I think that CBO data is fine, as far as it goes. A bit of information that would make that data more useful is what are the weightings in each category. That is what fraction of all federal employees fall into each category. Ditto for the private sector. It might also be useful to break the categories into three parts, e.g., high, medium and low cost of living areas. Then a much clearer picture could emerge.
I find both averages and percents relatively useless by themselves. With averages you want to know something about the distribution of the numbers that go into them and with percents you always need to know the size of either the denominator or the numerator. For example, if a school has a 50% default rate on loans and it's the University of Michigan we are shocked, but if it is a tiny Baptist school in the middle of Kansas with 50 students and two of them have student loans, we are ho hum about it. But just reporting a default rate as 50%, or saying "Some schools have up to a fifty percent default rate on student loans is, by itself, meaningless." There are so many well meaning journalists out there that just did not study enough basic mathematics, especially statistics. One has to be very careful with headlines these days.
I find both averages and percents relatively useless by themselves. With averages you want to know something about the distribution of the numbers that go into them and with percents you always need to know the size of either the denominator or the numerator. For example, if a school has a 50% default rate on loans and it's the University of Michigan we are shocked, but if it is a tiny Baptist school in the middle of Kansas with 50 students and two of them have student loans, we are ho hum about it. But just reporting a default rate as 50%, or saying "Some schools have up to a fifty percent default rate on student loans is, by itself, meaningless." There are so many well meaning journalists out there that just did not study enough basic mathematics, especially statistics. One has to be very careful with headlines these days.
Those are excellent points. I don't think there is enough information about his new job benefits to know if he really took a de facto cut, but it is very likely his new job is less secure, and how do you evaluate the value of job security? (I'm sure some academic economist would be happy to tell us how.
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