The New Republic

This is just asinine, especially from people who are so gung-ho about the notion that the market sorts everything out perfectly. If you pay people crap wages, what sort of workers do you expect to attract? The ones that aren't talented enough to take the private sector equivalents. That's a recipe for an efficient civil service, obviously. Not only is there less chance for talented people to advance to the same heights in the public sector as the private, like you mention, but you're also talking about a lot of jobs that don't confer much in the way of social prestige. (Plenty of people can rationalize the trade-off of lower wages in a widely respected position like teacher or firefighter, but it's a lot harder as a mid-level office worker for the Department of Labor or the IRS.) Furthermore, a truly fair comparison would have to break down the public-private disparities in various markets, since the federal pay scale is tied to cost of living in different regions. Full disclosure, I'm a federal employee, so I've got a little skin in this game.

- adaglas

October 12, 2009 at 6:38pm

Henry Blodget joins my long list of dishonest hacks, whose every word should be ignored.

- JEFF FREY

October 13, 2009 at 1:26am

Of course we do adaglas-are you kidding? At $40,000 to $50,000 per year jobs, we're not talking about "prestige jobs". When you consider these differences: Gov't health care is much better for their workers Retirement packages are signficantly better-usually defined benefits, with retirement possible at excellant level after 30 years on job Don't know about quality of workers at state/fed level-you do get what you pay for. My guess---we're overpaying these guys about $10,000 per year. With 4 million fed workers, that's $40 billion-a start on deficit reduction.

- lobosven

October 13, 2009 at 8:12am

Is that figure of $49,479 overall compensation or salary? Lobosven, those retirement and health benefits are the reason we government workers can safely enter a field with lower wages. Without them, no one would want to work in government.

- jfelliott

October 13, 2009 at 12:41pm

Mr. Elliott-the figures show public workers make more than private workers-so why do you need insanely expensive health and retirement benefits? You know the people in your office, as retirement approaches (your defined benefits plan usually averages last 3 years of service), starting to work OT, using less vacation and sick leave (you can monetize some of that in pay). I'll accept some blowback from a policeman, fireman or prison worker-otherwise, you guys have nine to five jobs with incredible job security. The figures above are wages-it's impossible to value health insurance and pensions. I'm watching the States of California and New York literally head into bankrucpty due to the public employee union's push on wages and benefits. what's more incredible-you give campaign contributions to the same people who set your wage and benefit levels. In some states, you've formed your own party to gorge at the public trough. I've had contact with much of you-you wouldn't last a day in the private world.

- lobosven

October 13, 2009 at 3:52pm

I work for th public sector. Our jobs are consistently underpaid for the type of education and experience you need. Private-sector studies have proven it over and over again. It's actually pretty difficult to get your foot in the door initially for mid-to-high level jobs like mine. Once your foot is in the door it is a bit harder to lose your job, but not that much harder in a deep recession. They just eliminate the program and ......poof.....the employees are gone, too. Yes, I appreciate the job security but, that is becoming more and more tenuous as our revenues continue to drop with the economy. We do tend to carry a bit more dead weight than the private sector, but this bad economy is giving our managers alot of leeway to get rid of those employees they haven't managed very well for a long, long time. The bad thing is that many of these decisions are based on internal politics and who sucks up to the boss rather than objective performance. Our public employee's civil service protections are pretty much nonexistent once they've made up their minds to can you. Yes, I appreciate the better benefits that we supposedly have. I say supposedly because that was true ten years ago but certainly isn't anymore. Our health benefits keep getting more and more expensive, our co-pays keep going up while our coverages keep going down. We had a one-year increase of 29% in our share of the health premiums in 2008! It's no different than the challenges everybody is facing right now. We need health care insurance reform more than ever. Many of our older employees are scared to death they'll get RIF'd and lose their dwindling health insurance and their years of paid retirement permanently. Even the government can hire three twenty-somethings cheaper than one fifty-something.

- desertdog

October 14, 2009 at 4:48pm

This is an interesting chart, and gets at an important point about government work. You're probably better off working as a janitor at a government building as opposed to a private sector one, but the prosecutors, judges, agency directors, generals and congresspeople are underpaid relative to the their defense attorney, business management, military contractor and lobbyist counterparts. Ironically, part of why the government can pay its top performers poorly is because these positions are resume gold for the higher paying corresponding positions in the private sector. Bottom line: a 10% or 20% across the board cut makes no sense, and would disproportionately lead to an exodus of the government's top performers.

- WillPastor

November 13, 2010 at 6:35pm