Thursday, March 11, 2010
Govt. workers feel no economic pain

By David M. Dickson

The recession and the ongoing jobless recovery devastated much of the private-sector work force last year, sending unemployment soaring, but government workers emerged essentially unscathed, according to data released Wednesday by the Labor Department.

Meanwhile, the compensation for state and local government employees continued to easily outdistance the wages and benefits for workers in private business, a separate Labor Department report showed.

Private-industry employers spent an average of $27.42 per hour worked for total employee compensation in December, while total compensation costs for state and local government workers averaged $39.60 per hour.

The average government wage and salary per hour of $26.11 was 35 percent higher than the average wage and salary of $19.41 per hour in the private sector. But the percentage difference in benefits was much higher. Benefits for state and local workers averaged $13.49 per hour, nearly 70 percent higher than the $8 per hour in benefits paid by private businesses.

Paul Booth, executive assistant to the president at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), attributed the pay difference to a changing government work force that has increased its proportion of higher-skilled workers during the past 15 to 20 years.

"In government payrolls, you no longer have low-wage occupations, such as janitors, whose jobs have been contracted out to the private sector," he said. This trend has effectively increased the average wage of those higher-skilled workers who remain, said Mr. Booth, whose union represents 1.6 million workers.

Small-government advocates see it differently.

Compensation for government workers "is a gigantic problem" that will only get worse in future years, said Chris Edwards, director of tax policy studies at the Cato Institute, which advocates less government and lower taxes.

"The defined-benefit pension plans for state and local workers and their post-retirement health care costs do not include the extent to which those benefits are underfunded or overpromised," Mr. Edwards said.

The cost of today's benefits for government employees ($13.49 per hour) assumes that these retirement benefits are fully funded. However, Mr. Edwards estimated that the benefits are underfunded by $3 trillion.

Quoted Text

"The defined-benefit pension plans for state and local workers and their post-retirement health care costs do not include the extent to which those benefits are underfunded or overpromised," Mr. Edwards said.

The cost of today's benefits for government employees ($13.49 per hour) assumes that these retirement benefits are fully funded. However, Mr. Edwards estimated that the benefits are underfunded by $3 trillion.

no sh*t sherlock......WOW!! it took this long to figure that out????

If government workers make so muchmore than their pr9ivate counterparts, how come the head of the NFP boys and girls club makes more than any government worker around, more than even the president

And if government workers make so much more than their private sector counterparts, explain why in the private sector, the head of RPI make like three times (just shy of a whopping million dollars) more than the government worker who heads up SUNY?

If government workers make so much more than their private sector counterparts, explain why the highest salary government doctor, the head of the state health department makes $137,000 while his counterpart in private industry at Albany Med makes $516,798?

Do you think most attorneys in the private sector get paid less than the $150,000 that the highest paid attorney in government work gets - Cuomo gets $150,000.  

Should government workers with skills get paid what burger flippers and Walmart greeters get paid?

Point taken MC.....but you are leaving out the cost of benefits that the taxpayer pays for FOR LIFE for all government employees! You forgot to mention the unions that either represent or OWN the government. You forgot to mention that in NYS the government workers receive their pension TAX FREE! You forgot to mention that depending on the union contract, government employees get FREE MEDICAL FOR LIFE at the cost of the taxpayer who must pay for their own.

If the private sector is so lucrative....why are there so many government employees? Why isn't everyone jumping on the private sector band wagon. The fact is ..... the public sector would have to work in a capitalistic competitive market. (something they are unfamiliar with) The public sector gets better LIFE LONG FREE BENEFITS. The public sector is graced with more days off than the private sector.

Basically....the private sector employees and bosses work and compete much harder and put longer hours in. Something the government worker knows absolutely nothing about.

With todays recession....tell me exactly how many of those people collecting unemployment are from government public sector jobs? NONE!

Average public employee makes $73,000 and the average private sector employee makes $41,000 and that's per the governments own statistics so that a pretty big spread. We're not talking about isolated CEO's just the average workers.

The NYS Pensions are not tax free.  They are still subject to Federal Tax.  I can assure you also, that our benefits are not free.  I pay close to $450 per month for my health and dental insurance.  Which is comparable to what my wife paid for an almost identical coverage through her private employer.  And at retirement, I will still need to pay for coverage.  As a State employee, I also must pay state tax so, we state employees are actually paying for our benefits twice if you want to get technical.  

The point is you can afford to pay for those benefits when you're making $30,000 a year more than the private sector does. Nobody said you were getting all your benefits free just that the public sector is being paid more right now.

To do a comparison of private sector vs. government sector accurately, try doing a job title comparison.  Of course, there are higher paid average salaries in government.  How many government workers sell hamburgers or deliver pizza to use a few examples of private sector employment.  

Take a private sector engineer or attorney and see what the comparable state worker salary is.  I think you'll find that the private sector salary is higher even ever after you add up the perks of good health insurance and a pension plan for the government worker.

Government workers are always eyeballed during recessions as being insulated from the real world.  I agree that we are, but we also don't get the benefit of the good times as a part of our salaries in stocks and bonuses.  We continue to get the same salary.  

Quoted from huskyhowls

To do a comparison of private sector vs. government sector accurately, try doing a job title comparison.  Of course, there are higher paid average salaries in government.  How many government workers sell hamburgers or deliver pizza to use a few examples of private sector employment.  

Take a private sector engineer or attorney and see what the comparable state worker salary is.  I think you'll find that the private sector salary is higher even ever after you add up the perks of good health insurance and a pension plan for the government worker.

Government workers are always eyeballed during recessions as being insulated from the real world.  I agree that we are, but we also don't get the benefit of the good times as a part of our salaries in stocks and bonuses.  We continue to get the same salary.  

do you know how many "clerks" work for the state/fed and they only file, copy, scan.  they are the equivalent of your myofascial bovine engineers and the carbohydrate delivery technicians.  

Quoted from littlesal

do you know how many "clerks" work for the state/fed and they only file, copy, scan.  they are the equivalent of your myofascial bovine engineers and the carbohydrate delivery technicians.  

And they are compensated accordingly.  Nowhere near the 72k that someone mentioned.

Lots of clerks, but far more nurses, geologists, engineers, attorneys, truck drivers, heavy equipment operators, tax specialists, troopers, bridge inspectors, foresters and prison guards to name a few.  Jobs that all require taking a civil service test.  Take one just for fun and see how you do.

Secretaries at GE make more than secretaries in NYS.  As I said, look at specific job titles and see how the numbers compare.

  
Income angst? Not for public employees
By Jeff Jacoby
Globe Columnist / January 27, 2010
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Sending your articleYour article has been sent. E-mail| Print| Reprints| Yahoo! Buzz| ShareThisText size – + LAST MONTH, the US economy shed another 85,000 jobs. It marked a miserable end to a calamitous year in which an estimated 4.2 million American jobs were liquidated, and unemployment rose to 10 percent. In addition, more than 920,000 “discouraged workers’’ left the labor force entirely, having given up on finding work and therefore not included in official unemployment data.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans who do have jobs have been compelled to work part-time or at reduced wages; many others have not seen a raise in years. But not everyone is having a rotten recession.

Since December 2007, when the current downturn began, the ranks of federal employees earning $100,000 and up has skyrocketed. According to a recent analysis by USA Today, federal workers making six-figure salaries - not including overtime and bonuses - “jumped from 14 percent to 19 percent of civil servants during the recession’s first 18 months.’’ The surge has been especially pronounced among the highest-paid employees. At the Defense Department, for example, the number of civilian workers making $150,000 or more quintupled from 1,868 to 10,100. At the recession’s start, the Transportation Department was paying only one person a salary of $170,000. Eighteen months later, 1,690 employees were drawing paychecks that size.

All the while, the federal government has been adding jobs at a 10,000-a-month clip. Between December 2007 and June 2009, federal payrolls exploded by nearly 10 percent. “Federal workers are enjoying an extraordinary boom time in pay and hiring,’’ USA Today observes, “during a recession that has cost 7.3 million jobs in the private sector.’’ And to add public-sector insult to private-sector injury, data from the Office of Personnel Management show the average federal salary is now roughly $71,000 - about 76 percent higher than the average private salary.

Needless to say, it isn’t only at the federal level that government pay and perks increasingly outstrip those in the private sector.

In Ohio, a joint reporting effort by the state’s eight largest newspapers found that even in a time of severe budget cuts, “one expense government leaders have not cut is pensions for their workers.’’ The annual public pension tab in Ohio, currently $4.1 billion, is growing by around $700 million per year. “Retirement incomes for the most experienced government employees top out at 88 percent of their active-duty pay,’’ writes James Nash of the Columbus Dispatch. “Unlike most private-sector workers, whose retirement is driven by the strength of the stock market and 401(k) plans, government employees’ pensions are guaranteed.’’

Moreover, government retirees in Ohio enjoy taxpayer-provided health care, and in many cases can retire at 48. Especially egregious are “double-dippers’’ - public employees who “retire’’ and get a full pension while returning to work and collecting a paycheck. In 2009, double-dippers were paid nearly a billion dollars by Buckeye State public-pension systems.

Ohio is hardly unique. A public-pension tsunami is beginning to inundate government budgets at every level. As more and more of taxpayers’ earnings are confiscated to fund outsize public-sector benefits, the backlash from the private sector will only grow angrier and more intense.

“We are about to get run over by a locomotive,’’ warned California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in his State of the State address this month. Over the past decade, he said, pension costs for state employees swelled 2,000 percent - but revenues only increased 24 percent. The state has had to come up with funds to close that gap - funds diverted from “our universities, our parks, and other government functions.’’

Public-employee unions fiercely defend their pay and pensions, but even union-friendly Democrats are starting to acknowledge the inevitable. “The deal used to be that civil servants were paid less than private sector workers in exchange for an understanding that they had job security for life,’’ former San Francisco mayor and California Assembly speaker Willie Brown recently wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle. “But we politicians, pushed by our friends in labor, gradually expanded pay and benefits . . . while keeping the job protections and layering on incredibly generous retirement packages . . . Talking about this is politically unpopular . . . But at some point, someone is going to have to get honest about the fact.’’

A showdown is coming, and more likely sooner than later. Taxpayers will put up with a lot, but their patience has its limits.

Wow!  I too am not happy with these numbers either.  My state salary hasn't taken a jump and we are cutting and not filling positions.  I can tell you there are a lot more appointees in this administration than in the past.  Those are not civil service rank and file jobs and typically they are higher paying than union jobs.  Lots of higher ups and policy makers.  Puhleez!!  

I personally have approached my state legislators with huge cost saving plan.  We'll see how far it gets with the Reps in the minority.  

WHAT/WHO are these federal workers doing, going to do etc??????

Quoted from 138

The NYS Pensions are not tax free.  They are still subject to Federal Tax.  I can assure you also, that our benefits are not free.  I pay close to $450 per month for my health and dental insurance.  Which is comparable to what my wife paid for an almost identical coverage through her private employer.  And at retirement, I will still need to pay for coverage.  As a State employee, I also must pay state tax so, we state employees are actually paying for our benefits twice if you want to get technical.  

I stand corrected. The pensions are just NYS TAX FREE! This just goes to prove how out of balance this all is. There are more public sector jobs in NYS than private sector jobs. And in a state that is all but bankrupt and looking for anything that crawls to tax, only private sector workers pay tax on their pensions....not the public sector. What brilliant government genius thought this one up?

What some people fail to see is that a government employee doesn't really care how much it costs them for their health care. They really don't even care how much money they make. It is the mentality that goes along with public employment. Government employees, at all levels, don't have the drive or desire to step out of their comfort zone and work in the public sector. I don't believe they have the fortitude nor the guts to join a real work force.

They too, like welfare recipients, feel protected, coddled and taken care of.  They just follow the piece of cheese in a mazelike robots. IMHO