Is that an economics class, an engineering class, or a psychology class? 
I’ve lost more than 50 percent of my team to retirements. I’m denied the authority to advertise and fill the vacancies. My travel and training budgets have practically been eliminated. My COLAs have been frozen the last two years, and projected to be frozen at least two more, meaning I’m not keeping pace with inflation. I’m only receiving a within-grade-increase (WGI) because I’ve received perfect outstanding ratings the last three years, and only in the past year had a permanent supervisor who could sign off on a QSI.
Congress has frozen this and cut that, except the statutory requirements I must follow. So I’ve not been authorized to reduce my workload, and with unfillable vacancies on my team, their statutory obligations must also be met by those of us who remain. According to a number of salary equivalency sites, my pay is about 30 percent less than private industry. However, if I include all the statutory requirements I must meet, and several job functions of which there is no real private equivalent, I’m due a 217 percent raise. Yeah, right. Let’s not forget the ten federal holidays I’m required to take (I’m not complaining). Nor my use/lose leave I take (because I earned it and I’m not giving it back to my employer gratis). Those also account for the projected pay raise I mentioned.
Lastly, there’s a twist. This post isn’t a rant, pitty party based on my job. I enjoy it. I do it very well. The taxpayers are doing well by me. My concern, my anger, are those who fall victim to these surveys, like the OP posted, that don’t actually address real world numbers. Federal civilian employment has hovered around two million for some 70 years, going back to FDR. The US population in that same period has more than doubled to about 310 million. Congress has passed program after program after program, with little regard to properly funding these programs. You also don’t hear about the phenomenal growth of civilian contractors, about four times as many for each federal employee. Their salaries all too often greatly exceed federal equivalent salaries. But you never hear about them and how much they cost you.
You also seldom hear, on average, federal employees are better educated, and more skilled, than their private counterparts. Finally, let’s not forget government is not business. Regardless of the rhetoric, the politics, and the mudslinging, everyone of my customers (that’s you) must be treated equitably, fairly, and honestly, even when you crap on me that I’m overpaid and underworked. You are entitled by law, as I am required to provide to you those services, by law. So perhaps the extra compensation you think I’m getting (and undeserved according to some) is about keeping the lights on and fires burning, especially when the shit really hits the fan and you end up coming to me for help that you know you will receive.
Yes. 
It is taught by my daughter, who has degrees in economics and psychology, and my, who has degrees in engineering. In my specialty there have been many papers, and some books, about the economics of engineering decisions. I used to get funding based on models of the savings from what we did. While we got the money, I never believed in our models. There were a lot of other mysteries. Once I saw what my daughter was studying about behavioral economics it all became clear.
More to the point, the President and Congresscritters can’t cut the pay of rank-and-file workers and funnel the difference directly into their own pockets. Private-sector executives can and do. That right there creates extra downward pressure on private-sector wages.
This supports the conclusion that the underlying difference is that the civil service retains a decent bare-minimum floor in terms of health coverage, etc. that has severely decayed in the private sector – a difference that shows up primarily at the lower levels and is irrelevant at the higher levels where the private sector can’t (yet?) push the floor down below that minimum.
Government and its employees are a favorite whipping boy today, with many claims that government is inefficient, bloated and unresponsive. Do the people who believe that honestly think that paying what government employees there are, less, will actually improve things?
I’d like to think that federal, state and local governments hire only the best and do what they can to keep talent and reward performance.
I don’t want my water tested by a minimum wage flunky or my freeways designed by a college dropout. I don’t want my public health workers to be the bottom of their class, nor do I want the air traffic controllers to fall asleep because they need to work two jobs.
Seems pretty simple to me…you get what you pay for.
I’m a federal employee. I work in a small office where all of us hold a scientific PhD, except for one who “only” has a Masters, and our front desk person, who isn’t even a Federal employee, because secretarial positions have mostly been made into contract positions, thanks in part to Bush II’s love of Circular A-76 (not to be confused with Order 66 from Star Wars).
Given that many of the lower paying jobs that once were held by Federal employees are now held by contractors, obviously the average pay for the remaining positions is higher than it was before, even accounting for inflation.
Federal employees have not had a cost of living increase since January 2010. President Obama wants to give us a paltry 0.5% increase in January 2013, but the Republican-lead House is determined that we don’t even get that. If we get nothing in January 2013, we won’t see an increase until January 2014 at the earliest.
Meanwhile, my agency’s budget has flat-lined. We can’t hire anyone new, but our workload keeps increasing. For FY12, performance-based bonuses can be no more than 1% of the total payroll, so managers don’t even have much ability to reward high performing employees. So much for encouraging innovation.
Our travel and personal training budget has been slashed by, I think 80%, which means we are slowly losing touch with progress in the field and becoming more isolated. Morale is sinking, and the best people are starting to bail.
We are the favorite scapegoats of politicians and journalists, who have managed to make a not insubstantial percent of the public think we are the enemy, thereby deflecting the blame from big corporations and their interlocking directorates.