Oh, I think I’m full of other stuff, too. 
One glaring omission I’m seeing is relative cost-of-living. I’m guessing that federal government workers disproportionately live in DC, which has a much higher cost of living than other places in the US. Federal employees who don’t live in DC will still disproportionately live in large cities, I’m guessing, leading to higher costs of living.
Most fed jobs have several different locality pays, w/ higher pay for the same grade in different locales. Whether those locality pays are accurate or sufficient is debatable, but a specific category of employee working in San Fran gets paid more than his counterpart in North Dakota.
That makes sense–but I don’t think that’d affect these stats. If you compare federal employees across the nation to other employees across the nation, but don’t adjust salaries by cost of living, you’d expect to find federal salaries significantly higher than others due to the locations of those jobs.
One part of it that does make a bit of sense is that government workers in a given sector are more likely to be unionized than private sector workers. Which is a bit consistent with the difference narrowing and reversing as you get higher up the educational ladder, in the CBO data. Don’t know if that would account for all of it, though.
My purely anecdotal data and (common?) knowledge is that the idea that govt employees get total less compensation is not correct. I have a Ph.D. I got a smaller paycheck from the govt. My 401K, insurance payments, and other things ate into my larger salary in industry so much that I got paid pretty much the same. I’ve tracked some colleagues in govt. Kind of the same thing for those doing a similar job as mine. I would prefer the govt gig, because my retirement would be virtually guaranteed (not tied to the stock market), I can retire at an awfully young age; and I have to screw up to get fired, rather than I have to continually bring value to stay employed in industry.
I’m actually suspicious of the “govt doesn’t pay as well” idea. Its not that I can see. In upper management, I think that is true…rest of the drones like me…I don’t see the evidence…especially taking into account that in industry you have to pay your own retirement fund.
From what I’ve heard in the actuarial field, government actuaries are paid significantly less than private sector ones.
I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve heard that the same is true for lawyers.
Certainly; but paying a lot more might attract the wrong sort of person.
It is the CBO that conducted the study. If it was biased, I would expect it to be in the direction of presuming that government employees are undercompensated, considering that it was government employees who did the study.
But salaries are adjusted for the cost of living, at least if I understood Dinsdale correctly.
Yes, they are. That is why federal workers are paid more than workers in other places. Federal workers tend to live in places with higher cost-of-living, so of course their salaries will be commensurately higher.
The CBO chart does not compare the pay of federal workers in Washington DC with the pay of private workers in Washington DC, for example.
It compares workers across the economy. The conclusion is clear, excepting advanced degree holders, government workers are better compensated. Seems like this would be something you’d be happy about.
What do you expect a DC-centric analysis to show that isn’t shown in the broader study?
I’d expect a DC-centric analysis to show that federal and private sector workers make about the same. Because you’re comparing apples-to-apples, rather than apples-to-watermelons.
How is comparing private sector workers across the entire economy to public sector workers across the entire economy apples-to-watermelons? It seems like a fair comparison to me.
If it’s been shown that public sector employees are better compensated as a whole, and that public sector employees have their salary indexed to the cost of living for the location in which they live, why would a DC-centric analysis show anything different?
Clearly:D
Because federal employees are not distributed evenly across the country.
The feds I interact with have their offices in Annapolis, Philadelphia, and DC. A few have their offices in smaller cities/towns, but the majority live in high cost of living areas. Despite having similar job duties and credentials, their salaries are higher than mine. Because their cost of living is higher than mine.
Private businesses do not exhibit the same spatial distribution as federal agencies.
Lemme ax you something:
If 75% of government employees live in areas with high cost of living compared to 40% of private sector employees, would you expect the average of the two groups’s salaries to be the same or different?
I don’t think the CBO study is biased so much as I think it isn’t useful. For starters, it only includes Federal employees, not state and local government employees who probably outnumber the Federal employees. Second, there’s no indication in that link that explains how the jobs are compared except to say the private sector workers are those who resemble the Federal workers in their occupations, years of work experience and certain other characteristics likely to affect compensation. It’s relatively easy to compare an accountant in private industry to an accountant who works for a government entity. Same for doctors, lawyers, janitors and a bunch of other jobs. But there are lots of other jobs that only exist in government - what private sector jobs are they comparing corrections officers to , or a park guide or a wildlife inspector ? Are they leaving those sort of jobs out altogether? Do they compare them to private sector employees with the same education (major and all) or just the same level of education?
Which reminds me of another point- when people say that government employees “take less money in exchange for security/benefits”, they often don’t mean for the same job. They mean the people could reasonably have expected to get a higher paying job with their education and/or experience but that those jobs were not as secure. For example, when my husband entered the workforce 30 years ago, he could have gotten a government job- but not one that paid more than he earned as a retail store manager. But had he taken the government job, he would have never spent a day out of work in the last 30 years. I guarantee that there were people in the same position that took the lower paying government job.
I don’t know how to explain this point any differently. But maybe I can try.
In Imaginary World, it costs $100 to have the same standard of living in the Big City that you can achieve for $10 in Podunkville. With me on this?
Private workers (at a specific education level) in Podunkville earn $10. Private workers (at a specific education level) in Big City earn $100.
Public workers (at a specific education level) in Podunkville earn $9. Public workers (at a specific education level) in Big City earn $90.
With me? They’re earning less on average.
There are 9 public workers in the Big City. There is one public worker in Podunkville. The average income for public workers is $819/10, or $81.90
There are 9 private workers in Podunkville. There is one private worker in the Big City. The average income for private workers is $190/10, or $19.
Clearly, public sector workers get paid a lot more than private sector workers in Imaginary World–nearly five times as much!
But if you look at salaries commensurate with cost of living, it turns out that public sector workers actually have a lower standard of living: because they’re concentrated in Big City, they necessarily get paid more, but it’s not enough to outweigh the increased costs of living there.
Obviously, things in Imaginary World are far more extreme than in our world. But hopefully the example helps you see the relevance of cost of living, even when indexed in federal salaries, in comparing private vs. public salaries.
The above is anecdotal. According to this cite 14.68% work in the “Washington, DC-MD-VA-WV Core Based Statistical Area”. That’s not a lot to go on.
According to this Cite:
Bolding added. The study controlled for geography. If I have to choose between your anecdotal experience and the CBO’s methodology, I’m picking the CBO.
This doesn’t reflect the CBO study. Your example has private sector employees being paid more, when in fact they’re paid less.
Furthermore, you’re just making up wages and cost of living. That’s hardly rigorous.
Of course I see the importance of cost of living. So does the federal government, which is why its employees in high cost areas get paid more.