Are government employees overpaid? If you listen to the union goons, the answer is a resounding no. If you take even a cursory glance at this chart, the answer is an even more resounding yes.
Daniel J. Mitchell has an interesting analysis that will help you pick a side in the dispute:
..the Bureau of Labor Statistics has a Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey, and this “JOLTS” data includes a measure of how often workers voluntarily leave job, and we can examine this data for different parts of the workforce.
Every labor economist, right or left, will agree that higher “quit rates” are much more likely in sectors that are underpaid and lower levels are much more likely in sectors where compensation is generous.
Not surprisingly, this data shows state and local bureaucrats are living on Easy Street. As the chart illustrates, private sector workers are more than three times as likely to quit their jobs.
If we were betting men, we’d bet that private sector workers are also three times as likely to be fired from their jobs. At least three times as likely. Maybe more like ten times.
Source: Daniel J. Mitchell
This post was last modified on March 2, 2011
View Comments (16)
Yep, really feel "appreciated" by walker raising my taxes 4 to 8 thousand to balnce his budget while immediately coming into office and giving 140 mil in tax breaks to corporatons. Oh yeah I am also middle class. He will be coming for all soon.
When are you government employees going to get the point? The "taxes" you pay do not add to economic growth in any community, state or our country! The taxes you pay helps pay the police chief. The taxes he pays helps pay the local dog catcher. The taxes he pays helps pay the cop on the street, The taxes he pays helps pay you. The money is going around in circles and creates no wealth or growth.
Don't try to say you pay property taxes or taxes on what you buy either because the same truth holds true. It is taxpayers money used to pay you, which in turn you pay back into the tax fund, less what you need to live on. In other words, the circle of money is shrinking and the more money spent on government employees, the faster the money circle shrinks. And now most states and our federal government has run out of money. The circle has closed and is now just a dot, like the period at the end of this sentence.
Of course your new governor is inviting private industry back to your state with tax incentives, my new governor is too. That is because they understand what you don't, only PRIVATE INDUSTRY JOBS create wealth and growth! Intel and Apple, Harley-Davidson and your local grocery store, private industry jobs that put NEW money into the system instead of moving it in ever smaller circles. That is what is going to get your state, and mine, out of the financial hole we are in and our governors know it. Listening to you crybabies will not help anything and our new governors know that too.
Do you want some gubment cheese with your whine? The rest of us have been paying your taxes for years, it's time you stood on your own two feet and started paying your own, or are you one of those people who thinks that when they get a tax check from Uncle Sugar they're somehow getting over on the man? If you're lucky enough to get a tax return, that was your money that the Fed overtaxed you for, sat on and collected interest on for a year then sent you the tailings after you twisted their arm to get it back. Use the Force Luke!
Don't be pissed at him -- be pissed at the people that blew all the money and he has to hold the bag.
Unlike the federal government, he can't just print more money, and erode it out of your savings.
My wife vountarily left her job 3 times each time for 10% more. I am public sector and do not have that option. Leaving a job for more money is not a bad thing.
Why do you not have the option to change jobs? All you do is say, "I quit" and then go find another job. Or do they have you enslaved?
Most of the people in government that say that they cannot leave have a real reason. For example, postal workers making $60k a year for what amounts to a manual labor job. If they leave, they'll have a hell of a time making that up, and we all know that living expenses always expand to equal income plus credit. This is whey they hang onto them long after the workplace has become downright unhealthy, and you get the kind of nutjobs that do get a gun and go blazing away when they finally get their asses canned.
Now, you might say that the intelligent answer to that is to go to night/day school and pick up a new skill. Yes, that would be the intelligent thing to do. QED.
Years ago, I lived up near a mail sorting center that was south of town, not far from a skeet range. I always had a great time with giving directions. "Just listen for the gunfire and turn left to get to the post office."
Dean, you are incorrect. The Sacramento Bee posts every California state worker's salary on their Web site. You can type in the name of any state worker and find out exactly how much they are paid. It will even tell you their salary for previous years.
There are stats lurking about. For instance, Milwaukee Public School teachers having AVERAGE compensation of over $100k a year. Meanwhile, "A new study comparing reading skills of fourth- and eighth-grade children in 18 urban school systems once again places Milwaukee Public Schools near the bottom of the ladder..." etc.
I'm certainly not trying to hate on all government employees, but teachers unions hold a special place in my heart with their bully tactics and lack of results, especially when they cry wolf with the "it's for the children!" line.
On the flipside, government employees will compare their pay to the private sector based on correlations such as type of degree and then say they are underpaid. I would hope a banker or stock broker or salesman or whomever would make more money since their job is to make money.
This is the most useless data I've ever read. True that there is a correlation, but it's also an inaccurate extrapolation.
I'll give you two reasons...
1) I work for state government (sciences) and my civilian counterparts make about 50% more take home pay than I do. They definitely make more across the board than I ever will. I've also worked "outside" the government and frequently job-hopped throughout the private sector. It was usually do to low job satisfaction, bad working conditions and being treated unfairly within a private company. It almost never had anything to do with being underpaid. Pay is not the only factor, but the article seems to think it is. I've willingly traded pay for better working condition.
2) The data is horrifically skewed; I can job-hop throughout the State I work in and still keep the same employer. If I work for the State of Montana, I can spend two years working in the environmental laboratory under the State's CDC entering data, then take a job with the the State's Fish & Game Dept. for several years as a field biologist and eventually switch to an outreach & education position. Then I move into a regulatory position with the Wetlands Dept. for three years and then Administrative Enforcement. I can work a dozen different positions within three or four departments (job-hopping) over ten years and I still have the same employer; the State of Montana. The "chart" does not account of that.
I hear and read a lot of news about how government employees are overpaid. But all the salaries are public record, and nobody ever post them or breaks them out as evidence to say, "look what these people make." Because if they did, they would disprove there own allegations. They do this with the salaries of elected officials, but those aren't "state workers."
You know, in principle, I don't have any problem with a person making a good salary. The problem is, the economy sucks, other people would just like to have a job, and hearing about the teachers tantrum in WI really sends them over the edge.
I know about the "trading salary for security" bit -- but the government employees I know didn't do that. They have union jobs, and essentially no skills at all other than manual labor, so they *can't* leave. However, some of the fire fighters and police in our area have been 'spiking' their pensions, so they can retire at full salary, without regard to what it is doing to their community. It makes them pretty damned unloveable, I can tell you.
A lot of the teachers I know are not well paid. However, they have to bear in mind that this little protest is highly offensive to other people, and will have lasting effects upon their employment. If the teachers in WI had any sense at all, they'd be bending over backwards to show that they are willing to suffer along with the rest of us. Having union thugs, political hacks and demagogues speak for them, throwing an irresponsible shit fit just makes people f*cking angry. It makes them start to ask other questions, for example, about union political contributions, which makes people even more f*cking angry. Then they start to looking at test scores, and get even more f*cking angry. Then they start to notice their kid spouting socialist crap they learned in school, and now they're REALLY f*cking angry.
You don't want REALLY f*cking angry people signing your paycheck. They'll do things to it.
Before I get going here, full disclosure - I am a government employee. I'm a firefighter, and screw you if you don't think I earn my money. The problem with this article is that the conclusion drawn from the stats is assumed to be correlated, when in fact there is limited basis for this. A huge reason people take gov't jobs is for stability/job security, not for the huge paycheck. I took a very big pay cut when I took the job of firefighter. I do agree with kb, it is hard to fire worthless employees, and that needs to be changed.
I would much rather see the budgets going after those who get "money for nothing", as opposed to going after those who work for it. There are so many people out there playing the system so that they don't work a day in their lives.
So very true!
I have to admit that I work for the government in a supervisory position and "we’d bet that private sector workers are also three times as likely to be fired from their jobs." is more true than you realize. It is damn near impossible to get rid of sub-par workers, and if you do try you and almost bet you are going to get sued.
"If we were betting men, we’d bet that private sector workers are also three times as likely to be fired from their jobs. At least three times as likely. Maybe more like ten times."
From my own experience, when a private company, even a multi-billion corp, needs to tighten the budget, you would be invited into a card game, where more responsibility would be dealt out, and you were not allowed to discard. No extra money was available to help you hold onto the cards. There might be promise for an increase on your review at the end of the year, if you held onto all of the cards, but, this would translate into a, maybe, an extra half of a percent. If you complained at all, one of the stock responses would be, "Well, we are under a lot of pressure, and corporate might move the business overseas if we can't continue to make a profit for them."
Can't quit that cushy gubberment job. Just like dire straits: money for nothing and chicks for free.