...and, in a time when many, many hundreds of thousands of private sector employees are either losing their jobs completely or losing major benefits AND/OR taking CUTS in pay, what happens at the Federal Government level?At a time when workers' pay and benefits have stagnated, federal employees' average compensation has grown to more than double what private sector workers earn, a USA TODAY analysis finds.
Federal workers have been awarded bigger average pay and benefit increases than private employees for nine years in a row. The compensation gap between federal and private workers has doubled in the past decade.
Federal civil servants earned average pay and benefits of $123,049 in 2009 while private workers made $61,051 in total compensation, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. The data are the latest available.
The federal compensation advantage has grown from $30,415 in 2000 to $61,998 last year.
sounds like Mr. Kaufman still has his head firmly planted up his ass regarding what's going on in America.Last week, President Obama ordered a freeze on bonuses for 2,900 political appointees. For the rest of the 2-million-person federal workforce, Obama asked for a 1.4% across-the-board pay hike in 2011, the smallest in more than a decade. Federal workers also would qualify for seniority pay hikes.
Congressional Republicans want to cancel the across-the-board increase in 2011, which would save $2.2 billion.
"Americans are fed up with public employee pay scales far exceeding that in the private sector," says Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va., the second-ranking Republican in the House.
Sen. Ted Kaufman, D-Del., says a pay freeze would unfairly scapegoat federal workers without addressing real budget problems.
A couple more points of note:
Downright embarrassing. And finally to make matters worse, since January of 2009 total non-farm employment is down almost 4,000,000 jobs....and the Government? Yeah, there are now 25,000 MORE government employees than there were 18 months ago.• Pay. The average federal salary has grown 33% faster than inflation since 2000. USA TODAY reported in March that the federal government pays an average of 20% more than private firms for comparable occupations. The analysis did not consider differences in experience and education.
• Total compensation. Federal compensation has grown 36.9% since 2000 after adjusting for inflation, compared with 8.8% for private workers.
I was just pointing out that a lot of companies COULD afford to pay their average employees more, give them benefits, etc, but they instead choose to pay those at the top exorbitantly. Just a reflection of the rapidly expanding gap between the richest and poorest, really.
The CSRS gravy train you are likely thinking of was phased out in the mid-80s. Perhaps you should get a bit more informed about the topics you blindly rail against. Now I'll give you a few minutes to Google federal retirement so you can plan your retort.