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For feds, more get 6-figure salaries
Average pay $30,000 over private sector

By Dennis Cauchon
USA TODAY

The number of federal workers earning six-figure salaries has exploded during the recession, according to a USA TODAY analysis of federal salary data.

Federal employees making salaries of $100,000 or more jumped from 14% to 19% of civil servants during the recession's first 18 months — and that's before overtime pay and bonuses are counted.

Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time — in pay and hiring — during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.

The highest-paid federal employees are doing best of all on salary increases. Defense Department civilian employees earning $150,000 or more increased from 1,868 in December 2007 to 10,100 in June 2009, the most recent figure available.

When the recession started, the Transportation Department had only one person earning a salary of $170,000 or more. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees had salaries above $170,000.

The trend to six-figure salaries is occurring throughout the federal government, in agencies big and small, high-tech and low-tech. The primary cause: substantial pay raises and new salary rules.

"There's no way to justify this to the American people. It's ridiculous," says Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, a first-term lawmaker who is on the House's federal workforce subcommittee.

Jessica Klement, government affairs director for the Federal Managers Association, says the federal workforce is highly paid because the government employs skilled people such as scientists, physicians and lawyers. She says federal employees make 26% less than private workers for comparable jobs.

USA TODAY analyzed the Office of Personnel Management's database that tracks salaries of more than 2 million federal workers. Excluded from OPM's data: the White House, Congress, the Postal Service, intelligence agencies and uniformed military personnel.

The growth in six-figure salaries has pushed the average federal worker's pay to $71,206, compared with $40,331 in the private sector.

Key reasons for the boom in six-figure salaries:

•Pay hikes. Then-president Bush recommended — and Congress approved — across-the-board raises of 3% in January 2008 and 3.9% in January 2009. President Obama has recommended 2% pay raises in January 2010, the smallest since 1975. Most federal workers also get longevity pay hikes — called steps — that average 1.5% per year.

•New pay system. Congress created a new National Security Personnel System for the Defense Department to reward merit, in addition to the across-the-board increases. The merit raises, which started in January 2008, were larger than expected and rewarded high-ranking employees. In October, Congress voted to end the new pay scale by 2012.

•Pay caps eased. Many top civil servants are prohibited from making more than an agency's leader. But if Congress lifts the boss' salary, others get raises, too. When the Federal Aviation Administration chief's salary rose, nearly 1,700 employees' had their salaries lifted above $170,000, too.

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20091211/1afedpay11_st.art.htm?loc=interstitialskip

 

What's being done here is comparing the average compensation of the upper strata of public employment to the average compensation of all strata of private employment?

 

Yeah, USA Today, a right wing news source, is misleading people about the mess that Obama is creating.

 

Non sequitur.

 

Suck those productive members dry then spit them out.

I dont know ANY private sector employees with guaranteed pension or health care for life. This trend is unsustainable.

A bubble in government services/employment perhaps?

 

The upper strata of the private sector don't need lifetime guarantees for those things. Their yearly cash compensation is in the tens of millions, their non-cash compensation can exceed that, and they typically already own assets worth millions (often billions).

Plutocracy is unsustainable.

 

Ya know, I sorta understand now why Obama thinks the private sector is the enemy. Duh, think about it. As the years go by, a higher and higher % of the population will be employed by the government, earning higher and higher wages, paying higher and higher taxes. Eventually, almost everybody will be government employees earning huge salaries AND paying huge amounts of tax which ................makes it, yes, a perpetual machine paying MORE INTO the system than taking out...........which means the country will no longer have debt. We'll have a surplus! Shit, see how simple this is? Not.

WTF, are these assclowns doing to us.

 

Link please.

 

It has been suggested that Obama is INTENTIONALLY overloading the system with debt so that it collapses.

Then, HE can instill a "new order" of social and economic justice... (Just like the Communists, Chavez, Castro)

After all HE did promise to "fundamentally reform America"...

 

Of course if you make tens of millions you dont need lifetime support. Thats not the discussion. The discussion is a public servant making 6 figs plus lifetime bene`s. And COLA raises every year...while the govt puts a lid on inflation via fudged CPI to reduce its Social Security liabilities to the payers I may add.

Right now the average public sector worker makes more than the private sector plus they receive lifetime support.

There will always be economic inequality. But we are better off when the private sector holds the majority of high money earners.

After all is said and done, who should make more? A private sector worker or public servant? A valued producer working their ass off adding to the economic engine and thier families wealth? Or a tax sucking bureaucrat working 9-5?

Government adds no value.